


Red Sun Rising

by madamepens (inkers)



Category: Naruto
Genre: Drama, F/M, Gen, Kinda, Post-Naruto Time Skip | Naruto Shippuden, Romance, Slight Canon Divergence, Suspense, but romance comes later, some characters may not end up dead like they're supposed to be, some language
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-15
Updated: 2018-04-16
Packaged: 2018-05-14 01:11:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 26
Words: 65,844
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5723887
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inkers/pseuds/madamepens
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Her mistakes have brought her here. Where war will break out between Akatsuki and the world. Where love is a secret privilege, friends be enemies, and enemies be lovers. Where the politics of the past have doomed and damaged the generations of the future. But they may fix those mistakes yet.</p><p>In which a Konoha kunoichi from an extinct clan risks her life again and again for the safety of her village, and the safety of those who protect it. No matter what that may entail.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Assignment

 

* * *

 

It was a cold, cold night.

   A woman perched atop the roof of an apartment in the heart of Konoha. Her eyes scanned her surroundings, but nothing seemed askew that she could detect from her vantage point. The streetlights were all on, one blinking, the streets themselves almost entirely empty -- another uneventful night. She wasn't complaining about the lack of excitement, though; Konoha having robbers or thieves, or even just plain troublemakers, would imply a lack of shinobi discipline, meaning the Elders would blame the Hokage, who would then take out her fury and frustration on the shinobi. And she would rather the Hokage be content.

   She sighed through the hole in her porcelain mask, a puff of her frosted breath rising before her eyes. It was far too cold for her liking.

   When the sky started to alight with the beginnings of sunrise, she jumped down from the rooftop, landed silently upon the ground, and commenced her walk towards her own apartment.

   This was her routine nearly every night; she watched the calm streets of Konoha for four and a half hours and then left for her rest, handing the job over to her neighbor, Niki Ashikaru, who would watch for the rest of the night. She had been doing this for almost a year, now -- when she was not out on missions or working late at the hospital, of course -- and she was starting to get tired of it. It was simply too much of the same thing, especially considering how peaceful Konoha had been in the past year.

   When she had arrived at Ashikaru's, she knocked four times, then went next door and unlocked the peeling white door to her own abode. She heard Ashikaru's door open and close as she stepped inside, and took that to mean that he had no verbal complaints this time. She closed her own door and walked to her bedroom. Her black hitai-ate was pulled free of her thigh.

   She slept, and a hundred miles away, a group of missing-nin rested and awoke the next morning, continuing their journey towards the Land of Fire.

* * *

 

Tanade Chiharu awoke the next morning to find herself still fully clothed, her mask laid upside-down on the rug and her hitai-ate gripped loosely in the hand that hung over the side of her bed. She groaned and mumbled to herself, attempting to clear the fog in her head, and slipped out of bed and into the short hallway as she re-tied her headband around her leg.

   She had to admit, she was _very_ tired that morning, and a large cup of coffee was sounding more and more appealing as it wore on, but she knew that she couldn’t waste any time.

   As she dressed herself in more casual clothes than her ANBU ones, she couldn’t help but remember what Tsunade had told her just the day before: “I want you in my office at 9:44 _sharp_. No sooner, no later!”

   Of course, Chiharu had asked her why she needed to be there at such an extremely specific time, but the Hokage just shook her empty sake bottle at her and shooed her off. Chiharu knew that Tsunade had been a bit troubled the moment she entered -- the Godaime’s eyes never failed to show her true emotions around her fellow shinobi -- and had been wary of what she wanted her to do. Of course, setting extremely specific tasks was certainly not an unusual feat for the Fifth, but the way that the order had been given was foreboding on its own.

   As Chiharu exited her apartment, stretching out her shoulders and fingers as she did, she heard a ruckus from below and immediately peered over the railing of the apartment building.

   On the street below, Haruno Sakura’s mother bent down to pick up the various bags and boxes she had been carrying, mumbling in irritation at the backs of a small group of almost-genin sprinting towards the Academy. Chiharu called out to her over the railing, “Need any help, Haruno-san?”

   The older woman sighed and waved her away as she picked up the last of her things. “Thank you, Chiharu, but I’ll be alright now,” she called back up to her. “But do me a favor and become a jounin soon so you can teach these kids better than to run over their elders!”

   Chiharu flipped over the railing and landed next to the woman with a smile. “I don’t know about that, ma’am, but I can certainly put in a word or two to my jounin colleagues for you.”

   “You’d better!” replied Mrs. Haruno as she continued the way she’d been going. “My Sakura was the last decent student I’ve seen out of that Academy and even her temper never got any better in that school!” She laughed loudly in farewell, as Chiharu waved her own goodbye.

   She never spoke much with the Haruno family, but it seemed that every time she ran into the Haruno matriarch, there was some similar ruckus inciting her to ask Haru to fix the Konoha youth, despite the fact that she’d always had very little to do with their education. That was more Hatake Kakashi’s speed, and even he struggled to have enough patience around young shinobi to teach them much of anything – at least until he’d been assigned Naruto, Sasuke, and Sakura two years ago. Nevertheless Haru always passed on Mrs. Haruno’s requests to him, though usually just for their amusement.

   As she arrived at the door of the Hokage’s office fifteen minutes later at exactly 9:44 a.m., however, any thoughts on Konoha’s youth left her mind.

   She knocked four times and, upon hearing an irritated “Come in!” from inside, opened the door and stepped over the threshold.

   “You wanted to see me, Tsunade-sama?” asked Chiharu as she scanned the office out of habit. Kakashi was present, leaning against the wall with his arms folded, and she offered him a smile. The only other thing that interested her was that the desk was messily covered in scrolls and books and sake bottles; so messy, in fact, that a good fraction of the things from the desk had piled onto the floor around it.

   Tsunade sighed and turned her back on the window behind her desk. “Yes,” she said, and, in the back of her mind, Chiharu noted that she sounded distressed, though it was slightly hidden by the authoritative power in her voice. “Let’s get right to it. I have recently received a report that Suna was attacked a week from yesterday.”

   “What?” said Kakashi in disbelief as he pushed himself off of the wall. “Why weren’t we told earlier?”

   “Because the first shinobi who was supposed to deliver this news was ambushed and killed as he entered the country,” Tsunade explained, casually emptying a sake bottle as she finished. “The second person they sent was an elite ninja of theirs and only just arrived here yesterday.”

   “Who was Suna’s attacker?” inquired Chiharu, although she felt she already knew the answer.

   “Akatsuki, of course!” yelled Tsunade in tired irritation, and slammed the empty sake bottle down as she sat down behind her desk.

   “What was the motive?”

   “I can’t be sure. That’s what I need to discuss with you two.”

   Kakashi took a step forward. “You don’t think they could be trying to finish off the Kazekage, do you?”

   Chiharu shook her head, and the other two shinobi turned to her. They could almost hear the gears in her mind turning and clicking. “No, they wouldn’t.” She started to pace. “He’s useless to them now, and is in no way a threat.” Kakashi gave her a skeptical look.

   “What do you mean, ‘not a threat’? He’s strong, and has command over an entire country,” Kakashi supplied, crossing his arms again.

   “That’s irrelevant, to them at least,” she said. “And do you really think Gaara would try to face Akatsuki again? He knows better -- he was almost killed the first time, and he even had his ‘ultimate defense’ then. Now, because Shukaku left his body, he has to defend himself _by_ himself, and it slows him down. He’s no threat to _them_ , nor are his people. Akatsuki is way too strong.”

   There was a knock on the door.

   “What?” yelled the Hokage.

   “It’s me! I need to talk to ya’!”

   “Fine. Come in.”

   Uzumaki Naruto entered as soon as the words left her mouth, smiling, and eyed the office innocently. “Wow, you really need to clea-- Kakashi-sensei! Haru-chan!” Naruto grinned wider as he saw his friends. Haru smiled lightly at him as Kakashi gave a short wave and a “Yo.”

   Naruto opened his mouth to say something else (most likely an overexcited greeting, since he hadn’t seen Kakashi or Haru in weeks,) but Tsunade interrupted. “What do you want, Naruto? We’re in the middle of something!”

   “Oh, sorry,” said the male jinchuuriki as he scratched the back of his head and laughed. “Uh, well, you said you had a mission for me, so I decided to come early….”

   “WELL, YOU SHOULDN’T HAVE!” Tsunade bellowed, waving a bottle at him.

   Naruto cringed. “I said I was sorry!”

   Before things could get out of hand, Haru stated calmly, “It’s alright. We can continue another time, can’t we, Tsunade-sama?”

   The blond woman sighed and sat down again (when had she stood up?). “Fine. The mission is actually for you, Haru, Kakashi, _and_ Sakura, so if you would --”

   Another knock sounded, and the four turned to see Haruno Sakura standing in the open doorway. “Am I late?” asked the pink-haired teen upon seeing everyone in the room.

   Tsunade sighed. “No. Early. Come in.”

   Sakura walked over the threshold and stood between Naruto and Kakashi.

   “Alright,” Tsunade began. “I have a mission for all of you…”

* * *

 


	2. Ambush

 

* * *

 

Haru stopped on a branch near the forest’s pathway. Naruto and the others soon caught up, landing in a tree beside her. She parted the leaves in front of her silently, and then motioned for the others to do the same. Their target could be seen about a mile down the path to their right, slowly making its way over the horizon.

   “So we just have to ambush them?” whispered Sakura. Haru nodded. “Why? Tsunade-sama never explained.”

   “They,” said Haru, figuring it was time Sakura and Naruto understood, “are from the Sound Village.”

   Sakura gasped and turned her gaze to the carriage and guard ninjas making their way towards their small group. “Y-…you mean…?”

   Haru nodded, but Kakashi spoke for her. “Sasuke could very well be one of them. For all we know, he could be the one in the carriage… which is why we can’t risk killing _any_ _one_ until we’ve recorded their identities. We can’t let any of them get away.”

   Naruto’s eyes narrowed. Sakura bit her lip.

   “But I doubt that Sasuke would be with them,” commented Haru quietly. “Sound values him too highly, and Orochimaru would rather have him unscathed.”

   “…But,” said Naruto slowly, “he could be.”

   Haru nodded. “He could be.”

   “Get ready!” hissed Kakashi as the carriage drew ever closer. The group tensed.

   The carriage, pulled by two brawny ninja, was mere yards away from the ambush point. The Konoha nin held their breath. Guard ninja surrounded the carriage from all sides, except for one who walked in front of the rest. Haru guessed him to be the scout, from the way his eyes scanned almost every bit of their surroundings. They were only feet away, now… inches --

   A net of wire sprang upwards and caught four ninja, including the apparently useless scout, holding them tightly in midair suspended from an overhanging tree branch. On cue, Kakashi and Sakura jumped out from their hiding spots, nearly invisible from their speed, and tackled three ninja and bound them in wire. Meanwhile, Haru leapt towards the carriage, throwing out wires and small chains. She dodged almost all of the weaponry thrown at her, and successfully bound the last four ninja. As she landed, Naruto jumped into the carriage, a determined look on his face. The group heard a muffled thump, and he walked out with a tied up, white-haired man, his expression half-triumphant, half-disheartened.

   Soon after, all of the Sound ninja sat, unmoving, against the carriage, and Haru and Kakashi began to interrogate them. Naruto and Sakura stood by with keen eyes.

   After a while, the two jounin found that none of them, except the last one who they hadn’t tried yet, seemed to know much of anything about where they were going. The only piece of useful information they had gleaned was that the carriage had to be taken directly north until the man in the carriage ordered them to stop. It was that very man that they hadn’t interrogated yet.

   “You,” said Kakashi, nodding to him. “What is your name?”

   The man lifted his head, smirking and showing his face at last, and the Leaf nin recognized him instantly.

   “Kabuto!” shouted Naruto. “You--!”

   Haru held fast to the kyuubi’s arm, feeling it would be best to keep him restrained.

   Kakashi’s eyes narrowed. “Where were you going?”

   “And where’s Sasuke?!” Naruto interjected, pulling against Haru’s arm.

   Kabuto laughed as Kakashi kneeled in front of him with a kunai drawn. “I don’t think that’s any of your business.”

   “You’d tell us if you knew what’s good for you,” Kakashi growled and held the kunai to Kabuto’s neck.

   He chuckled. “Are you serious? You’re not going to get anything out of me with a _kunai._ Heh, even with that Sharingan of yours, you can’t scare me.”

   Kakashi sighed quietly, glaring. “Maybe so. Haru… your turn.”

   Haru nodded and gave Naruto a warning look as she let go of his arm and walked to Kabuto. Kakashi stood and took a step back, allowing her full access to Orochimaru’s assistant. She closed her eyes briefly, and when she opened them her eyes had changed from their usual green to a pale shade of grey, three small darker circles overlapped around the pupil.

   “We warned you, Kabuto,” she said in a low voice before placing her fingertips on his forehead. “Now you’ll see why.” Her fingers slipped into his head as if his flesh and bone were water – as if she were a ghost. Haru stared into his eyes for a second before closing her own to focus her chakra.

   “Are you serious?!” he said, only regarding the fingers passing through his forehead with a mild disinterest. “Genjutsu isn’t gonna work on me either, girl.”

   “It’s only half genjutsu,” she said, eyes opening once more. “I’ll show you the vision, but that’s only for kicks.”

   “Wha--” he began, but as her other hand entered his stomach, his eyes closed against his will.

   _He lay on a steel bed, his vision limited to what was directly above him. He couldn’t control himself -- it was like someone had possessed his body. He could see a few throwing needles floating above him, all pointed towards his abdomen. Suddenly, pain wracked his body as thousands of needles began to pierce his stomach and then disappear, then appear and pierce him again, this time in his leg. This continued for what felt like hours, before it suddenly stopped as fast as it had begun. He was panting. The pain was gone, but he could still feel the ghost of it making him flinch. Then, in the space of a second, he could feel his bones breaking -- by this point, he couldn’t even pinpoint the exact place – all there was was the sound of cracking and screams and pain and pain and pain and--_

   Haru watched as his body fidgeted this way and that, before he screamed again. She removed her hand from inside his arm, healed it just as she had the other bones, and then let the chakra dissipate from her other hand. Kabuto’s head dropped and he panted for breath, still twitching from the former pain. She removed the fingers from his head and he winced.

   The group let a few moments pass, the only sound being the wind and the Sound ninja‘s labored breathing, but before they could say anything, Kabuto spoke up.

   “Okay,” he gasped, glaring up at her through the curtain of his hair and the glare of his glasses. “Okay…. We were going to… a lookout tower…. It’s already… deserted…. There are… stashes of… weapons… and poisons….” He went back to his labored breathing.

   “Is that all?” said Haru.

   He nodded before sending another weak glare her way.

   “You’re sure about that?” she said skeptically.

   “Yes, I’m sure!” he hissed. “You—“

   Haru sighed and reached into his chest before he could finish his insult. Her fingers twitched, and Kabuto was unconscious. “Alright – Sakura, Naruto, start taking these ninja back to Konoha.” The two appointed ninja nodded and picked up a handful of the ninja by their bindings before leaping off into the forest.

   Haru sighed again. “You know, I half expected them to be going to Orochimaru’s hideout.”

   “So did I,” said Kakashi, moving the rest of the ninja away from the carriage. “But I suppose that would be too easy.”

   “Always such simple missions lately, I swear… and those night watches aren’t making things any better,” she continued, picking up deflected shuriken and leftover wire.

   He chuckled a little. “Sorry about that… I would’ve taken your place, but I’ve been swamped. …I suppose there’s no point in complaining about it, though,” he replied. The two began to dismember the carriage – the mission required it so as not to tip off another ambush in the area planned for the next night.

   “Hm,” said Haru. “What are we going to do with all of this?”

   “I would say burn them, but….”

   “Bury them?”

   “Either that or… we could find a ditch somewhere.”

   They laughed.

   “Burying it is, then,” said Haru, and she pulled the tarp from the ceiling.

   Ten minutes went by and Sakura and Naruto came back to pick up more Sound ninja as Haru and Kakashi proceeded with burying the extremely dismembered carriage. Fifteen more minutes flew by and they came back to get the last of the ninja, including the unconscious Kabuto, which Haru knew at least Tsunade would be thrilled about. The carriage was completely underground ten minutes after that. Haru and Kakashi moved on to keeping a lookout in the area for half an hour, as ordered in the mission scroll.

   Haru dusted off her shirt and gloves, sending a hesitant glance in the copy-nin’s direction. “I’ve been thinking…” she said, but lost herself in thought.

   “About what?” said Kakashi. She glanced up at him with a stern look in her eyes.

   “Akatsuki.”

   He watched her in concern as they sat down at the base of a tree.

   “I just don’t understand what they’re planning. They wouldn’t attack Suna for no reason… but I can’t see a realistic reason for it no matter how I look at it.”

   Kakashi sighed, partly exasperated. _Is Akatsuki ever off of her mind these days?_ he thought. “I don’t know… but whatever it is, we have to be -- _umph!_ ”

   Haru had thrown herself onto him, putting them some twenty feet away from the tree they had been sitting under. Quickly, Haru sat up again and pulled out her defensive wire, throwing a shield of it between them and the tree, hands up in a seal. Kakashi heard an explosion immediately afterwards.

   _Was that an explosive tag?_ he thought.

   “ _Get up!_ ” she hissed and stood, retracting the wire with another hand seal.

   Kakashi stood. “What--”

   “ _Sh!_ ”

   Kakashi narrowed his eyes at her, but listened to their surroundings silently nonetheless. He may not have heard anything, but something in the atmosphere definitely felt wrong.

   Suddenly, a large black blur darted across the pathway at them, something glinting in its clutches. It was only feet away when Haru darted at it, knife in hand. She successfully blocked it, and the figure paused for a moment, allowing Kakashi to see that it was a man wearing an Akatsuki cloak. But before he could see his face, the man jumped back and struck again.

   Haru dodged the attack and slashed at the foe, but he had already moved behind her. Using the knife’s momentum, she spun around and slashed again. The figure blocked her knife with a kunai and readied himself to jump back again, but Haru leapt forward, her blade still on the figure’s. She managed to slam him into a tree, and Kakashi finally saw his face clearly.

   He had black hair tied back, a scratched hitai-ate from Leaf, red eyes… _Uchiha Itachi_.

   Haru appeared to have noticed the person’s identity as well, for she exclaimed, “You—what are you doing here?!”

   Itachi chuckled before pushing her off of him and reappearing instantly behind her, kunai at her neck. Haru tensed as she felt him behind her, but didn’t bother to turn around this time -- she had already realized what this man wanted, and that he would not harm her. Itachi moved his face to her ear and whispered, making sure to drag his breath across her skin, “I thought I had made it obvious. I’m kidnapping you, _Haru-chan_.”

   He was right – he’d made it clear from his minimal effort that he certainly wasn’t fighting to kill -- but she couldn’t help but feel some small amount of shock.

   “If you fight me,” he continued slowly, “you’ll only be sealing your fate.”

   Before she could say anything in reply, Kakashi leapt forward and aimed a kunai at Itachi, but was met by another blade instead of flesh. Itachi swung his weapon out, forcing Kakashi back a yard or two. “So protective, Kakashi. You shouldn’t let your opponent read you that easily -- they could use it against you.” So saying, he pressed his kunai to the back of her neck, and she felt blood trickle down her spine.

   Haru leaned forward, away from his knife, proceeding to spin around and kick at her opponent. She was easily blocked by his arm, but instead of attacking again, jumped next to Kakashi, who immediately understood her stance and kept his eyes sharp on the Uchiha. She closed her eyes briefly, and when she opened them, they were grey again.

   “ _Keigan!_ ” she muttered before throwing her knife at Itachi and rushing at him in the same instant, hands up and ready for the fight. She swiped, punched, kicked, and swung at him, but he dodged away from all of it, knowing better than to try to block her – if she touched him, the fight would be over. As she aimed at him again, he leapt back and closed his eyes.

   “Don’t look at him!” Kakashi shouted, raising his hitai-ate away from his eye.

   “I know!” said Haru and darted at him again.

   But before she could even reach him, an arm swung out of nowhere and Haru, not dodging quick enough, ran into it dead-on. A constricting pain rippled through her body from her neck and she fell to the ground, clutching her throat and coughing rapidly. Blood soon splattered the ground beneath her.

   “Haru!”

   She heard another clang of kunai and several thumps, but she couldn’t get up. They’d assumed he was switching to the Mangekyo Sharingan and it had only been a distraction – she cursed herself for not seeing through it. Thinking fast, she pushed her fingers into her neck and quickly healed it as best as she could, before standing up again and looking for Kakashi and Itachi.

   Itachi had thrown the copy ninja into a tree so hard that it splintered and bent into his shape, and immediately Haru ran at him. She threw two kunai and leapt to the side as he repelled them back at her. Her feet landed on the bark of a tree and she used it to spring at him. He poised himself in defense, but Haru disappeared in a puff of smoke before he could try to dodge her.

   Several moments passed in which Kakashi regained his bearings and rushed at Itachi.

   “You’ll have to do better than that, Kakashi. Haven’t I already proved that?” said the Uchiha as he pushed his attacker away again.

   Kakashi smirked beneath his mask and put a good distance between them before quickly pulling out a scroll and performing the correct hand seals. Immediately knowing what he was up to, Itachi dashed at him as Kakashi’s ninja dogs sprang forth from the ground.

   Then, before anyone knew what had happened, Itachi froze in place, allowing the dogs to catch up with him and hold his body in place with their jaws. Haru retracted her hand from Itachi’s chest.

   “Your vision really is deteriorating,” said Haru in a low voice, and Kakashi thought he heard something melancholy in it. Itachi glared at her coolly. “You know I can freeze your movements, but you didn’t see it coming? Hm.”

   He said nothing, keeping his gaze level with hers.

   “Itachi,” she said bitterly, holding her hand ready at eye-level. “Die!” Haru thrust her hand forward into his torso, but not before catching the knowing glint in his eyes.

   The ninja dogs disappeared in preperation as her hand passed through her target -- and yet, as it happened, Haru knew she was striking a shadow clone.

   Once the smoke from the clone cleared, Haru deactivated her Keigan with a hand massaging her temples, and then turned to Kakashi with a frustrated sigh. “We should get back to Konoha. We’re probably running late, and you know how Tsunade gets…."


	3. Dream

 

* * *

 

  _"Chiharu?"_

_That voice… who was it?_

_“Chiharu… are you awake?”_

_So familiar… Sakura? No… it was male._

_The voice sighed. “…Of course you’re not…”_

_Naruto? No, it was a deeper tone than his. Less energetic._

_“Chiharu… I really wish you’d wake up. The others won’t stop bothering me.”_

_Kakashi? No. It wasn’t that mature._

_“They seem to think that I know something they don’t.”_

_Sasuke? …Yes, it had to be Sasuke. Definitely._

_“Naruto’s been threatening to come in here and just shake you awake… the dolt.”_

_Haru tried to see him, but her eyes wouldn’t open… she was so, so exhausted._

_“Sakura is trying to look up medical jutsu, but she’s horrible at it so it’s not like it’ll help any.”_

_Why was she so tired?_

_“Kakashi-sensei comes in here and watches you a lot. Either that or he’s reading that book… I don’t know.”_

_…What happened?_

_“Inari and his mom are worried that if you don’t wake up soon… you’ll never wake up. Tsunami said that Haku might have torn your spinal cord… but she’s not sure….”_

_Haku…. Her mind reflected on the events within the ice mirrors in rapid flashes. She remembered traveling to the Mist Village to inquire as to why Kakashi’s team was taking so long to get back; how when she came across the bridge she discovered a boy named Haku trapping and showering needles upon Naruto and Sasuke; how she had jumped in to defend them and stood in Haku’s path as he rushed at her teammates; how he had punched her in the stomach, her most sensitive spot, upon catching her off guard; how she had been half-unconscious because of it; how she awoke to find Sasuke protecting her and an unconscious Naruto; how she had rushed at Haku in a fury but was stabbed in the stomach with three of his needles; how she had screamed and passed out…._

_“Tazuna finished the bridge yesterday… he said he wants to name it something special, but he won’t tell us, yet.”_

_Why was Sasuke talking to her like this? If he thought she was asleep, then…._

_“… Chiharu… nobody knows what to do. Everyone is worried about you.”_

_She tried to speak, but her mouth wouldn’t even open. She made a sort of sigh, though…._

_“Even I… in a way… I mean, after everything that…”_

_He was stuttering, like he did when he was seven years old, and looking up to his brother with a smile. She tried again. Her lips parted._

_“Never mind.”_

_Sasuke sighed, but she didn’t hear him move. She tried again. She could feel her vocal chords push._

_“…”_

_She tried again…_ _almost…._

_“I just wish you would wake up, Chiharu. I’ve…”_

_“… S-… Sasuke…”_

_She heard him gasp. “Wha-?”_

_“I am… awake.”_

_“…Did you hear me?”_

_“All of it… and… don’t worry… I’m healed.”_

_“But-- what? …how?”_

_“…”_

_“…”_

_“… Doesn’t matter.”_

* * *

 

Haru’s eyes slid open. She blinked, and then she smiled sleepily. That memory was the beginning of so much more… it seemed amazing that Haru could still remember it all.

   She sat up and took in her surroundings: the bedroom of her apartment. She rubbed her eyes and stood up, starting her morning stretches.

   She was surprised she could recall those memories from two and a half years ago, when she had first met Naruto and Sakura --- when she was reacquainted with Sasuke after so many years. She was so accustomed to sorting through her memories and locking certain ones away -- she wouldn’t have been surprised to find she’d forgotten it.

   Then again, she had memories she could never think to lock away from that same year. When she first saw Kakashi after weeks of him being on missions. Or when she had gotten to show off her abilities a little bit to help Kakashi train his team. When she was on the trip back to Konoha with them. Even when she’d returned after a three month mission to find the team split in two.

   Haru gave one last pull on her leg and walked to the kitchen for breakfast. She still missed being in the Village Hidden in the Mist, with Tsunami and Inari, who had given her a sense of home again. But she knew that it was useless missing them, since she doubted she would ever see them again. She quieted her thoughts at that point and decided on a grapefruit.

   At 8:52 am, Haru left the apartment and walked to the Hokage’s. Tsunade had said that she wanted to talk to Haru, and that she would have the rest of Team 7 there as well.

   She assumed that it was a meeting of some sort, but also wondered why Tsunade said that only _her_ team was coming, when meetings usually involved more people than that. Yet Tsunade didn’t usually say what she truly wanted from people in her messages, which _was_ smart, seeing as there were a lot of shinobi who might have enough guts to intercept it. All the same, the meeting had her on edge.

   When Haru knocked on the Hokage’s door at 9 o’clock sharp, a voice said “Enter” from inside and she did so, closing the door behind her. Besides the Hokage herself, Team 7 and the Hokage’s assistant, Shizune, were present in the office.

   “Hey, Haru! You’re right on time!” exclaimed Naruto as said kunoichi stood next to Kakashi.

   “I tend to do that,” she replied, and Tsunade began to speak.

   “Alright,” said Lady Hokage. “I’ve called all of you here because of some… disastrous news I received early this morning. A scout from Grass came to tell me that their village was attacked by a member of Akatsuki at midnight last night.”

   “What?!” yelled Naruto immediately. “Who was it?! Do we know them?”

   “I have been led to believe that it was the same ninja that kidnapped the Kazekage months ago.” Tsunade took a long swig from her sake bottle and rested her arm on her newly-cleaned desk.

   “No way…” Sakura muttered.

   “Do we know of any particular motive?” inquired Haru, crossing her arms.

   “Not that I’ve heard.”

   The room grew quiet. After some moments, Haru continued with, “This makes no sense. It’s as if they’re just attacking villages at random now.”

   “No,” said Kakashi as he rubbed his chin in thought. “They’re attacking ninja villages.” He looked back to Tsunade. “Did he attack the Kage directly or just some part of the village?”

   “It was in the market district,” replied Shizune as she looked over a clipboard, “and the messenger said there were several small explosions in random parts of the village before the attacker actually showed up. He was riding a white bird made out of what seemed to be clay.”

   “Yes,” said Haru, closing her eyes. She began to pace. “That sounds like him.”

   “What?” asked Naruto as he took a step forward.

   “Why would they be attacking Grass, though?” inquired Sakura, her eyes narrowed in confusion. “I mean, I can see them attacking Sand, since it’s such a big, prosperous country, but the Akatsuki doesn’t have anything to do with the Grass village… do they?”

   Haru’s eyes shot open and she stopped in her tracks. “Did Deidara take anyone with him as he left?”

   Shizune frowned. “Deidara…?”

   “The man that attacked,” she clarified hastily.

   “Oh, um…” Shizune mumbled, and scanned the clipboard quickly. “…The messenger said that a few villagers saw him fly away with something that _may_ have been a body, but there was too much smoke from the explosions to know for sure.”

   “Of course,” Haru said bitterly and started pacing again.

   “Hold on,” said Kakashi. “You don’t think it was a--?”

   “Yes, that is _exactly_ what I think.”

   “It was a what?” asked Naruto.

   “Well, this explains everything… but now we have another problem,” said Haru, ignoring Naruto.

   Tsunade nodded. “How are they tracking them so accurately?”

   “Hey!” exclaimed Naruto. “Don’t leave us in the dark!” Sakura nodded in agreement.

   Kakashi turned to them, arms crossed over his chest. “The Akatsuki captured another jinchuuriki,” he said grimly.

   “What?!”

   “Actually,” said Haru as she stopped pacing. “They’ve captured two.”

   “What do you mean two?!” yelled Tsunade in disbelief. “The messenger said that he was sure the man only carried off one body, if any!”

   “Right,” said Haru, turning towards the sannin. “In our last meeting you told us that Akatsuki attacked Sand. What do you think they were doing?”

   Shizune gasped as Tsunade began to speak again, her face screwed up in anger. “That’s… that’s… I can’t _believe_ this….”

   “It seems that Akatsuki has been more active than usual lately,” stated Kakashi as his one visible eye closed. “We need to be very careful from now on.”

   Everyone in the room shared the same worried expression but nodded in agreement. Tsunade picked up a fresh sake bottle and drank deeply.

   “Alright,” she said as the bottle hit the desk once more. “Chiharu, no missions unless they are approved and reviewed specifically by me. Naruto, your missions from now on will be limited, and you’ll have to have a full cell with a medic-nin present. And both of you – absolutely no leaving the village unless I’m aware of it. Got it?” The two ninja nodded in agreement, and Tsunade dropped back into the chair behind her desk. “And now how to sort out what missions are Akatsuki related or not….” Bitterness dripped heavily from her words.

   A knock sounded on the door.

   “What now?!” the hokage yelled.

   The door opened and in walked a young Leaf chuunin. “Lady Tsunade,” he said. “There is a meeting in five minutes with the Elders and--”

   “Yeah, yeah, I know!” said kunoichi shouted, thus dismissing the chuunin boy. She turned to Kakashi’s team. “You can go now… but report to me at nine o’clock tonight.”

* * *

 


	4. Fire

 

* * *

_Drip. Drip. Drip._

   Haru’s blood pooled on the floor, gradually growing bigger, slowly soaking into her clothes, and running off into a drain somewhere off to her right. Maybe if she could find the wound, she would be able to heal it…

_Drip. Drip. Drip._

   She couldn’t open her eyes, her arms were dislocated and her chakra drained. No hope. None at all.

_Drip. Drip. Drip._

_So this is how it ends,_ she thought bitterly. _Soaked in a puddle of my own blood and unable to heal myself._

   Haru was far past self-pity, far past hope. Acceptance and sadness were all she had left. Her teammates had no idea that she was even dying, let alone in this particular room.

   _“This is a follow-up mission to your previous one…. Just get to the lookout tower that Kabuto mentioned and collect all the poisons there. I need to make sure that Konoha has every antidote for whatever our enemies have, understand?”_ Tsunade had said. _“But be careful… no matter how painful the interrogation was for Kabuto, he still could have been lying.”_

Kabuto _had_ lied.

   They had not entered a storage tower.

   Nor had they entered Orochimaru’s hideout.

   No.

   It was _his_ hideout.

_Drip. Drip. Drip._

* * *

 

It was difficult to stay conscious as she gazed into the fire.

   The four-cell team had been traveling for a day by now, and had chosen a small clearing to camp in for the night. Each member of the team had to take watch for two hours, and it was now Haru’s turn, who, unlike Kakashi, spent it staring into the fire instead of doing something more supposedly productive like reading.

   It was actually kind of funny, that flame, because fire usually reminded Haru of Sasuke. But tonight, she could only think of his brother, and that was probably the reason that Haru was having a hard time staying awake. When she thought of Itachi, she remembered how he would always force her into sleep with the Tsukuyomi when they had missions together. It had been rather annoying at first, but as necessity often demanded on their ANBU missions, she eventually got used to it. The last time he’d used it on her was during a three month S-rank mission two years ago, though. She hadn’t seen him in all that time until the ambush…

   And then Haru’s eyes drifted closed as the Sharingan passed through her mind for what had to be the fiftieth time that night.

* * *

_Chiharu's pen was almost soundless as it ran over a page in her notebook. She had made some observations on Itachi's Sharingan out of pure boredom, and, in her fascination with the stunning bloodline trait, had felt the urge to record her observations -- with Itachi's permission, of course. They could end up valuable information one day, knowing how prone the Uchiha clan was to deteriorating vision._

_The Uchiha missing-nin sat across from her in the den of Akatsuki's temporary meeting place, leaning back casually yet with his distinct, natural formality. They sat in black leather chairs opposite each other, a fireplace to Itachi's left. His expression was one of mild interest as he watched her hand glide along the paper._

_"May I ask you something, Chiharu?" he said in pure velvet. His eyes were coal black this hour._

_Haru shrugged, still not quite used to having her full name used all the time as it was now. "Sure. But I may not be able to answer." She glanced pointedly at the other Akatsuki in the room, who sat in the far corner by the door, stitching the holes he’d made in his cloak on a mission._

_Itachi nodded slightly. "Why is it that you are so interested in learning biology? You must already know so much."_

_She blinked unconsciously at his reference and mulled over his question a little, turning it over in her mind, looking for the easiest answer. After a few moments, in which Itachi waited patiently, she said, "That's just it. I only know so much." She paused and mentally turned the question over a few more times. "The more I learn, the more I can understand the minutiae of the ninja body. With understanding comes a quicker response to the stranger wounds." She hesitated. "With this knowledge, I become stronger. I become more... powerful." There. There was no way that he could misinterpret_ _that._

_"Strength... power... we all seem to aspire to those traits. But is it really so honorable that one would sacrifice valuable time for it? And in vain?" He said this almost absent-mindedly, as if any answer to his question would be inconsequential._

   _Haru's brows pulled together. "Since when were Akatsuki_ _honorable?"_

   _Itachi smirked, refocusing on her, the phantom of a smile. "Since I joined them."_

_"Naturally," said Haru, her eyebrows twitching upwards. It felt odd to hear him joke now, odder still to respond in kind._

_"Oh?" he questioned, one elegant brow rising in curiosity. He was standing, now, ever so casual, his smirk gone._

_Haru smirked unconsciously, her pen scrawling in the notebook again. "Sarcasm, dear," she spoke in a strictly mocking tone._

_Itachi's hand was suddenly enclosed around her throat and she found it difficult to breathe. Her head hit the wall and it was this pain that made her realize that she was now on her feet. Then his lips were at her ear, and she would have gasped. "Mark me, kunoichi -- Pein might have let you in on all of our secrets, may have given you free reign, but if you ever mock me again, your neck... will_ _snap."_

_She blinked, eyes wide, and the elder Uchiha loosened his grip just enough for her to breathe again. But Haru did not sputter and gasp for breath. Instead, she took a long, deep intake of air and returned to her regular breathing patterns. In the shuffle she hadn’t noticed the other Akatsuki in the den now standing as well, as if to get a better view of their scuffle. He must have overhead Itachi’s threat._

_"Honor," she whispered, and Itachi nodded solemnly as he finally pulled his hand away._

* * *

 

“CHIHARU!”

   Haru’s body jolted and she was instantly on her feet. “What’s—?!”

   The answer to her unfinished question came in the form of a fuuma shuriken aimed at her torso. She ducked and dashed out of sight to take in the situation.

   Akatsuki.

   _Again._

   But there were two this time, she could make out in the darkness; one with black hair, one with dark blue.

   Quickly, without thinking, Haru appeared beside Kakashi and began to help him fend off the blue attacker. This one didn’t move quite as fast as the other, Haru noticed, but the sword he carried seemed menacing enough to make up for that.

   _Samehada,_ Haru thought, but she didn’t immediately comprehend it.

   The man swung at them but they both leapt back in time. A stray shuriken flew past her, nicking her arm, but the pain was enough to wake her up fully. As she threw kunai at their opponent, Haru remembered in fragments something shocking enough to make her freeze in motion.

   _Samehada—Kisame… Itachi!_

“We’re fighting _them_?!” she hissed at Kakashi as her body regained movement before she could get hurt. He nodded. Haru growled.

   “Hahaha… scared, Chiharu- _chan_?” Kisame laughed as he swung at said ninja. Some of the wrappings on his sword flew off, revealing what his sword _really_ was: an over-sized shaver.

   Something pierced Haru’s back but she could pay it no mind; she was far too busy glaring and slashing at Kisame unsuccessfully with a pair of knives.

   She was in a strange sort of haze… all she could feel was exhilaration, exhaustion, and bloodlust; nothing else seemed to matter except killing these men, and she couldn’t even do that. Her adrenaline seemed to exist only because of fear – the fear of making one wrong move that could get one of them killed – and anger.

   Soon, all that Haru could smell, taste, and feel was blood. The sad thing was that most of it was hers. She and Kakashi had only managed to give Kisame a few cuts and bruises and one long, shallow gash on his leg that didn’t seem to bother him. In her peripheral vision, Haru realized that the whole team was losing. Sakura had been knocked out and Naruto was on his final gear protecting Sakura from Itachi. Kakashi was quickly running out of chakra and Haru was sloppily covered in injuries that she didn’t have time to heal, even with her Keigan activated.

   And when Haru realized this, she began to feel an emotion that she hadn’t felt in a long time: hopelessness.

   It seemed like all that they could do to remain alive was flee, but even then, Itachi and Kisame would follow. There was nothing to do, now.

   Haru pulled Kakashi into the trees as Kisame gave another swing that revealed his entire samehada. She glanced at their clearing in surprise. There was fire almost completely covering the perimeter of the area and everything was draped in orange and red hues. Ditches and giant cracks in the earth were everywhere, likely created by Sakura, and all of the surrounding trees were either splintered badly or stripped of its leaves. _Why were they losing so badly?_

   And suddenly, Haru realized with a sickened tremble what their only option was.

   Jinchuuriki.

   “Kakashi,” said Haru, breathless, trying to get everything out before Kisame approached. “I need you to get Sakura and Naruto up here with you and then stay in this spot no matter what happens.”

   She could see his what-the-hell-kind-of-order-is-that look even with the mask.

   “Please,” she said, scanning the clearing once more. “I _need_ you to do this.”

   His confusion was still apparent, but, after a moment’s hesitation, he complied.

   Haru dropped to the ground as Kakashi returned and heard something crack beneath her. Ignoring the pain, she listened to Kisame ramble about them “chickening out.” And then she performed the hand seals that she had memorized not so long ago.

   One fleeting moment and Haru pointed her fingers at her abdomen and jabbed them into the seal on her stomach.

   There was an eternity filled with silver fire and the moment passed.

* * *

 


	5. What's Left

 

* * *

 

All that remained was instinct.

   _Kill these men, kill them now, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill._ The Gobi inside her, now all around her in clouds of boiling steam, repeated the words like a drum for war, like a dying heartbeat, like footsteps pounding on water.

   Haru could only see Itachi and Kisame, could only think of their blood on her hands. Rational thought was gone, and all that Haru knew about herself at the moment was that she had three long, transparent tails made of the Gobi’s silver chakra, a pair of darker animal ears on top of her head, razor-like fangs, claws, grey eyes, grey markings all over her, silver chakra and clouds of steam like a suit of armor. The sad part was that she only knew this because of what Rakumaru, as the Gobi called itself, whispered in her head.

   And Itachi was smirking. He told her that, too.

   So she lunged at the Uchiha and missed, and she swung her claws at him and caught the end of his cloak. She lunged again and went through him, stalling his heart for only a second, making it skip a beat or two. As he regained his bearings, she spun and kicked him into a tree. Still crouched, she disappeared and reappeared behind Kisame where his Samehada couldn’t reach her. She leapt and dug her claws into his back, tearing muscle, spilling blood, burning him where the Gobi’s steam-based jutsu touched him.

   She wasn’t listening to anything or anyone but Rakumaru, but she didn’t need to. She saw Kisame's pain and took advantage of it by reaching into his arm and breaking it, wondering distantly why she didn’t just tear it apart. Rakumaru told her that Kisame screamed as his bone shattered. Rational Haru wouldn't have believed this.

   It was after this moment that things started to seem blurry.

* * *

 

_"I need to find the Hokage!" said the chuunin at the main door._

_"Why?" said the guard ninja. "What happened? Does this have something to do with the smoke over there?" The ninja pointed._

_The jounin gave him a meaningful look._

* * *

 

Naruto and Kakashi were tense as they watched their friend with horror and amazement. Haru was ruthless, wild, bloodthirsty -- so unlike herself, and yet there was a look in her eyes that Kakashi knew was Haru, not the Gobi, somewhere deep within her body. He wondered how much she could see, how in control she could possibly be. But Haru would never fight like this.

   “Ah!” Naruto yelled as Itachi kicked Haru off of his teammate. If it hurt Haru, she either ignored it or she had already healed for she was already crouched and fighting again, so fast that it was nearly impossible to distinguish one slash or hit from another. There was protest from Naruto each time Itachi got her, and Kakashi knew it was taking every bit of control he had not to jump back into the fight.

   Itachi was still smirking. Something was different from the other times that Haru had transformed – Kakashi felt something in the air, something about the way the two Akatsuki were fighting, something was wrong. Itachi was still smirking, even after the gash on his arm, the scratches on his face and the burns on his hands, even after being thrown around the battlefield as if weightless. Even Kisame didn't seem to be getting any more exhilarated than he was when they first started fighting, something Kakashi knew was strange even after only fighting him once before. Neither Akatsuki was trying any harder to win—

   It was this last thought that struck Kakashi, that made him realize what was really going on. It was like what had happened on their previous mission: Itachi had demonstrated no particular effort in actually capturing Haru and yet no hardship in admitting that he was going to kidnap her. He had never said why or when – he knew he wouldn’t kidnap her then – it was all staged—

   –the plan was to kidnap her _now_.

   They were wearing her out; that had to be why they didn't seem interested in winning the battle. All they wanted was to get her tired enough to pass out, as they knew she would soon, by which time they would already be carrying her off.

   Kakashi could not let this happen.

   They couldn’t kill her. He wouldn’t let them.

   But what could he do? He was far too injured to try and fight now, to try and stop all of this. His chakra was almost depleted, and he was too fatigued to come up with any sort of plan…. Dammit, what could he do—

* * *

 

_"Hokage-sama!"_

_Sarutobi beckoned for the ninja to enter his office. Why not? He had already thrown the door wide open._

_"What is it, Ashikaru?" said Sarutobi._

_"Hokage-sama...! The Tanade House... it..." Niki Ashikaru tried to catch his breath. "... it... and Chiharu-san..."_

_"Ashikaru," Hokage said. "Breathe, then tell me."_

* * *

 

Haru began to feel dizzy. Rakumaru was doing nothing to help, either, with his constant, loud chanting of _kill, kill, kill,_ the way he pushed her body past its limits _\--_ she felt a migraine pulsing in the back of her mind. The adrenaline was there, but the energy was gone, and the desperation was setting in. Hopelessness followed desperation, and after that, her head was so clouded that she couldn't even name all that was wrong with her.

   She felt her body swaying as she continued to fight Itachi and Kisame, her vision less acute now. Was the Gobi's chakra draining as well? How long had she fought for this to finally occur? Or was it just her body failing them both?

   Why weren't they dead yet? Why hadn’t they run off?

   Soon enough, Itachi went back on offense instead of constantly dodging and deflecting Haru's moves. His kunai were cutting her up again, his hands and feet bruising her in every vulnerable spot, which, to him, was everywhere. Distantly she felt him throw her into a tree across the field by her arm, felt it dislocate, felt the tree splinter around her, bruising her spine. She leapt from the tree back towards the fight but as they dodged her she only ended up losing her balance and falling to the dirt. She stood as quickly as she could, too slow, watching from somewhere far away as her opponents approached again.

   And suddenly Haru had no desire to fight back.

   It was like her will had slipped away in the space of a second, leaving despair in its place. Her body felt weak with the weight of it, her legs ready to buckle and force her body to finally just lie down. She almost wished that she could comply with that, but something inside of her wouldn't let her give up, wouldn't let her send up the white flag. This was all that kept her standing, but, just as her will had departed, so did this feeling go and leave her with a strange sort of numbness that increased the fog in her head.

   Eventually, she simply stopped hitting and dodging altogether. She was so, _so_ tired….

   Itachi gave one last, lingering blow to her head, and black was all she knew.

* * *

 

Now was Kakashi’s chance, and despite his order for Naruto to stay out of the fight, he had no choice, there would be no other opportunity—

   He had to save her before it was too late—but the moment had passed—Itachi and Kisame were disappearing in a flock of crows—

* * *

 

_Ashikaru took a moment to let his lungs catch up to him before continuing. “Hokage-sama... the Tanade House caught fire and burned to the ground. Chiharu-san is the only one left.”_

_Sarutobi looked resigned as he hung his head. “...It was the annual family reunion, wasn't it?”_

_Ashikaru nodded gravely. "Yes. There are shinobi there now, doing what they can but…” He paused, then shook his head. “…ANBU suspects foul play.”_

_The Third Hokage looked up, his face aged and serious. “They suspect Chiharu did it?”_

* * *

 

When Haru woke up, she gradually became aware of two things: she was lying on a hard, freezing floor, and she could not move at all.

   Soon, the pain set in.

   Then there was lethargy.

   After that came realization:

   First, she was alone. Her teammates were gone -- dead or alive, she had no idea, she couldn’t remember where they had gone in the fight. Second, she would not be able to defend herself if anything or anyone came to harm her; she was too weak to move and her chakra was depleted. Third, she could not heal herself.

   Haru had been kidnapped by Itachi. She knew that, too.

   Anger consumed her thoughts. Never before would she have thought he would do this, but if he wanted to play dishonorably, so be it. She would not let go of her dignity any more than she already had for him, not if this was how it would always end. If this was how her life would end—

   Haru realized then, that, with all of her ailments, without her precious people, she was going to die. There was nothing to do about it. She didn't even know where she was (and quite frankly didn’t want to know,) and was too scared and too much in pain to even open her eyes. So, she was going to die. So be it.

   A knot formed in the back of her throat as she thought of everything she had never accomplished, everyone she had never said goodbye to. She thought of Naruto, probably breaking his neck right now trying to find her. She thought of Sakura, most likely still knocked out because of Akatsuki. She thought of Sasuke, who didn't even know that Haru had ever left on the mission in the first place, and likely would never know if she were gone.

   She thought of Kakashi. No matter what she thought or remembered, she couldn't guess what he might be doing. Had he given up? Was he too injured to look for her? Or had he already fallen somewhere, trying desperately to find Haru, because his wounds had finally brought him down…?

   Haru felt like crying.

   She had not felt so depressed, so weighed down by the world ever since… . She had known all of her loved ones for years, had known Kakashi since her days at the Academy; and now they were injured and desperate, looking, searching….

* * *

 

_"Where is Chiharu?"_

_"We... don't know, sir."_

_"Then find her. I wish to speak with her before ANBU makes any more ludicrous assumptions."_

* * *

 

   Haru realized when she woke again that she had no idea how long she had been unconscious. For all she knew, her team could already be dead, and she had never, never said goodbye… or anything else that they deserved to hear.

   She was dying, and cold, and she wanted to cry so _badly_ … but Haru knew that one sob could rip her throat apart, and by then she wouldn't be able to stop. So she didn't allow herself to cry, just like she had never allowed herself to make a mistake; but, just as her ninja way was impossible, as were her attempts at holding herself together.

   Haru tried to move her arm the slightest bit, and found out two things: both of her arms were mangled and dislocated, beyond any possibility of moving; and she was lying in a pool of blood. Her blood.

   With that, she knew nothing but agony as sobs and heaves and wailing consumed her once strong, now frail body. As she cried, she spit and coughed, adding to the pool that was already gradually surrounding her. She cried for her team, for her non-existent family, for herself, her past. She felt like dying, now. She would welcome it gladly.

   Everything was tearing. Everything was soaked in her blood, everything was slipping away and falling and tripping and spinning. Everything was pain, and cold, and pain _—_

   Hours passed, and Haru miraculously fell asleep again.

* * *

 

_“Chiharu.” The Hokage watched her knowingly as she cried. There was nothing to be done. He sat down again, silent._

* * *

 


	6. The One Responsible

* * *

When Haru awoke again, her eyes opened easily, allowing a faded light to engulf her senses. It felt like looking into the sun, compared to how she had felt earlier.

   _Earlier._ Memory rushed through her. Once again, Haru felt the helplessness that accompanied her nonexistent knowledge of… well, everything. She had no idea how long she had slept, or where she was, or even how many bones were broken for whatever reason.

   She began to feel stupid, but she halted these thoughts. What was the point? They would only make her hurt even worse than before, whenever that was.

   The dreamlike quality of her first awakening had left her alone and stuck in bitter reality, where nobody was around to hear her cry, or help her to her feet. She had felt pitiful then. Now, she heard nothing, felt nothing but the pain of her lingering injuries – and still no one was around to rid her of the mute numbness, the tasteless feel of nothing, where before there had been at least a shred of hope. She didn't want this at all; she didn't _need_ this—

   –and then there were footsteps.

   Haru's senses jumped, the gears of something turning inside her and giving her a sick sort of hope. Someone was there. Someone had arrived and was searching the halls, looking for a lost friend, ready to embrace her and bring her home….

   Then Haru realized that simply because she wasn’t alone didn't mean that they were a friend of hers. They could be there to finish her off, to take care of a mission that needed fulfillment.

   It could be anyone, and with her luck, likely not someone that Haru wanted to see. It _could_ be Kakashi, or Naruto, or – hell, even Sasuke. Or, it could be _him_.

   This place that Haru laid in might _belong_ to him. She could be in _his_ dwelling, hideout, whatever, in _his_ room, on _his_ floor…

   Haru waited for the footsteps to stifle.

   There was silence.

   Haru could feel their chakra outside the room, beyond her line of sight.

   A creak, a step, a squeak, a step, a click -- and there were shoes on the very edge of her vision.

   "You're awake," said a velvety, cool voice and her heart stalled. She swallowed and winced, but she could feel now the blood rushing in her veins. At the moment, nothing mattered but him….

   Haru's last guess had been right.

   She was Itachi’s captive.

* * *

 

_"I need to find the Hokage!" said the jounin at the main door._

_"Why?" said the guard ninja. "What happened? Does this have something to do with that smoke over there?" The ninja pointed._

_The jounin gave him a meaningful look._

_"He's in his office. Go."_

* * *

 

_"Hokage-sama!"_

_Sarutobi beckoned for the ninja to enter his office. Why not? He had already thrown the door wide open._

_"What is it, Ashikaru?" said Sarutobi._

_"Hokage-sama...!! The Tanade House... it..." Niki Ashikaru tried to catch his breath. "... it... and Chiharu-san..."_

_"Ashikaru," Hokage said. "Breathe, then tell me."_

_Ashikaru took a moment to let his lungs catch up before continuing, his mouth set in a grim line. "Hokage-sama... the Tanade House caught fire and burned to the ground. Chiharu-san is the only one left."_

_Sarutobi looked deeply troubled as he hung his head. "...It was their annual festival, wasn't it?" The one time every living Tanade would have been under one roof._

_Ashikaru nodded gravely. "Yes. There are shinobi there now, doing what they can but…” He paused, then shook his head. “…The ANBU captains suspect foul play.”_

_The Third Hokage looked up, his face aged and serious, fingers intertwined tightly upon the desk. "They suspect Chiharu did it?"_

_"Well," said the jounin hesitantly from across the room, "they say it's rather suspicious that she happened to leave on a mission before the house caught fire."_

_"Where is Chiharu now?"_

_"We... don't know, sir."_

_"Then find her. I wish to speak with her before ANBU makes any more ludicrous assumptions."_

_"Yes, sir," said Ashikaru, bowing in respect before leaving the office._

* * *

 

_A girl entered the office five hours later, escorted by Ashikaru. Her face was red, and her eyes puffy. Her knuckles were splattered with blood that flowed downward and engulfed her fingers._

_Ashikaru left when the Hokage nodded to him. Sarutobi gestured for the 14-year-old to sit down in the chair in front of his desk. She complied but kept her head down, as if to avoid the Hokage’s scrutiny._

_"What have you done to your hands?" said Sarutobi, his eyes sympathetic._

_Haru shook her head. Her lip quivered for a short second._

_"Chiharu," he said, his face more serious now. "What happened to the Tanade House?"_

_Haru's face showed anger for the fraction of a second before she lifted her head, eyes flaming with hurt. "...What do you mean, 'what happened'? They're all dead! What more do you want?!" Her fists clenched, stretching the wounds and splitting her knuckles further, but she didn't flinch._

_"Do you know who did it?" asked Sarutobi._

_She hesitated. Emotions flickered behind her eyes before she finally did what she had looked like she wanted to do since she entered: she doubled over and sobbed, muttering and whimpering about mistakes...._

_"Chiharu.” He watched her knowingly as she cried. There was nothing to be done. He sat down again, silent._

_"Punish me… exile me… put me to death... I deserve it... I should have joined them…"_

_Sarutobi simply stared, his eyes sad._

_“How… could…” she muttered, but had not the strength to speak any longer._

* * *

 

   Haru tried to breathe calmly.

   Itachi knelt beside her. "Heal yourself."

   Haru didn't move -- a strange déjà vu prodded her, reminding her of times at the compound -- but she closed her eyes in an attempt to ensure that she didn't look into the Uchiha's. After all, she had already fallen unconscious twice since she had arrived; she was tired of sleeping. Besides, she didn't need his Tsukuyomi to do that.

   He took this action as a reply. Haru felt a hand on her back before she felt the pulsing of Itachi's chakra through her body.

   "Heal yourself," he repeated, his voice low.

   Haru was amazed that he would even bother to do such a thing, but she rolled onto her back slowly and sat up with his help, wincing minutely, complying with him -- she saw no point in arguing with him in her current state. She focused her chakra into her right arm, healing it enough that she could move it and activate her kekkei genkai.

   Itachi watched her as she worked, running her hand weakly through whatever damaged flesh she had. She was surprised to find that there weren't as many injuries as she thought, but still there were too many to bother counting -- if the unchanged pool of blood around her was any indication. She wondered if he hadn't secretly been _trying_ to kill her.

   _That's not his way, though,_ she thought as she realigned the bones in her left foot. _He'd turn me in again, give me to his leader--_

   It was then that she realized _why_ she had been kidnapped, _why_ Itachi had forced her to resort to the seal on her stomach: he was planning to turn her in to Pein.

   He was planning to let them take the Gobi.

* * *

 


	7. Honest Liar

* * *

Haru ran her hand through her throat and healed the last of her body. It had not taken as long as she had originally thought, but she still felt as if it had taken hours and hours. But, she supposed, this could just be because Itachi had watched each and every one of her movements as she worked. He seemed to either want to make sure that she wasn't about to try anything with a result out of his favor, or he was simply studying, as was normal for him.

   A strange, nostalgic sort of feeling hit her then. Itachi had always been a calculating sort of person, always the one who stayed behind to watch before he would try it himself. He had been like this, as far as she knew, since birth. It was strange, really. He could do something that he'd never been able to do before perfectly after watching someone do it only once or twice, without using his Sharingan. He never even had to practice. Everything seemed to be second nature to him, no matter if someone in his family before had the ability or not.

   _He's like a sponge,_ Haru thought, but upon realizing how absurd that sounded in reference to _him_ , she decided that she was still tired, or perhaps had had too much sleep.

   She looked at him, nearly staring. His eyes were black, his face devoid of emotion -- _of course_ \-- except for a small trace of curiosity.

   She wanted to go home.

* * *

 

"WHAT DO YOU MEAN WE CAN'T GO AFTER HER?!" Naruto shouted, his palms colliding with the top of the desk. Everyone in the room jumped, startled at the outburst. It had been rather sudden; he hadn't said a word since they arrived in the Hokage’s office, and now he was shouting.

   "Naruto, please," she said after quickly recovering from the outburst. _This wasn't unexpected,_ she thought, thinking on how the tensions in the room had been gradually escalating since the beginning. "I know this is hard for you, but--"

   "NO!" yelled Naruto. She thought she saw a tint of red in his eyes. "You obviously _don’t_ know! She's our friend! We're not just going to _leave_ her there with those _monsters_!"

   "There’s nothing we can do, Naruto!” Tsunade responded with equal fervor. “Every shinobi in Konoha wants to bring her back. She is one of us and we will try to protect her no matter what, but until we get a lead on Uchiha Itachi’s whereabouts, there’s nothing we can do. It would only be a wild goose chase."

   Naruto growled. "Well, I'm not giving up! I’ll bring her back myself!"

   Tsunade stared at him, her eyes firm and intense, but sympathetic. She should have known that Naruto would react like this. He had already lost Sasuke -- of course he would try even harder to bring Haru back. He didn't want to lose another comrade.

   "Naruto," she said. "I know that you would give anything right now to get her back, but you have to--"

   "No," Naruto growled, lower than before. "I don't want to hear it. I'm going after her, and if any of you truly want her back, you'll come with me." And Naruto turned and left, clenching his fists so hard that his palms bled.

* * *

 

"It'll never stop, will it?" Haru said quietly, her fingers lingering on her arms, tracing the veins and the outlines of her bones. She must have looked pathetic to him.

   Itachi looked at her, blank as always except for a softness she could make out in his eyes that made her miserably uncomfortable.

   Her grip tightened on herself.

   He stood and walked to the fire, his back to her. "...That depends on the situation in question."

   She glared tiredly at his back. Ever since she had healed herself that morning – with the help from Itachi _–_ she had been ridiculously exhausted, which was strange. Haru never became tired after healing herself. But then again, Haru never cried, either....

   She did not reply.

   A long, musing moment passed before Itachi spoke again, his voice smooth as always. “No,” he murmured. “I don't believe it will end.”

   Haru expected this answer. He was right, sadly, but of course he was. He always was. It was almost depressing, actually, that even though he was such a devious, traitorous man, he was constantly right about everything. He was horrible, but amazing. Selfish, but true to his word. Anyone could find a thousand bad things about him as the next found a thousand good -- maybe two thousand, if you made exceptions.

   Life was complicated around Itachi.

   Yet a life without him was a life on edge for Haru. If she had never rendezvoused with him in the first place, what seemed like so long ago, she wouldn't be as good a ninja. He had helped her -- and crushed her -- in many ways. He trained her in his style for "extra research" as Haru called it, even as she trained him under her own methods to be smoother, more silent, more efficient. He silently taught her what life opposite Konoha was like for more experience and wisdom; for this there was no way to repay him. And most importantly, he taught her how to just choose not to care. He taught her to be ruthless, merciless, when there was something that she wanted.

   But it had been too much. He taught her far, far too much, and she nearly became a threat to Akatsuki, and because of him. This benefited neither of them. He had been pushed to tell Akatsuki about what she was, and the organization had now captured her, after only two years of her running away from them.

   Without Itachi, she wasn’t sure she would have anything to fight for except for saving Sasuke, which would only last so long, she knew. In fact, defeating Itachi was a dream that she had shared with Sasuke from the beginning, something that had brought them closer together, even if Sasuke never quite understood her meaning. If Itachi had never slain his clan, the clan that had been practically brothers with the Tanade clan, Sasuke never would have befriended her. They might have even become enemies. Then, Haru would not want to bring him back, thus distancing herself from Naruto and the rest of her now friends… which was definitely not a good thing to do.

   In truth, she could say that she was glad that Itachi was who he was -- or at least that he existed at all.

   But she didn't want to be glad. She didn't want him to be this thing he had become, but she needed him, in a sense, and it was this that drove her to want him defeated the most. It scared her, really, that she still needed his existence so much when they were enemies now. _He had turned her in_ , and yet she still needed him. She was going to _die_ because of him. Akatsuki would become even more powerful, because of him, and it wouldn't stop there. It would never, never stop. Not while Itachi was around. Not ever.

   So he was right. Not even after Akatsuki had reached their goal would it end. No, that would be only another beginning to a tale that had no closing.... And what a horrible tale it was.

   Haru nodded finally, taking in what he had said, for there was yet again nothing to do. It had been like this for hours -- he had brought her forcefully into the main room, controlling most of her movements using the Mangekyou, and had told her to wait, so both sat down in silence, neither intending to look at the other. After an hour of this, she had begun to realize that she wasn't the only one waiting -- he was too. He was anticipating something... and then she wondered what it could be, but there were too many possibilities. So there had been no answer -- to any of her silent questions -- so she had waited because there was nothing left to her, not even the freedom of movement. While she waited, she thought. Her thoughts led to unpleasant scenarios, and then depressing hopes, and then....

   "Chiharu," said Itachi, still facing the fire.

   She looked up at him hesitantly.

   "...You may die very soon."

   She swallowed and nodded. _Of course._

   A long, long moment passed in which her mind became numb and blank.

   Then he turned to her, his face unreadable.

   "Why does this not bother you?"

   She stared. "It does, actually. A lot."

   "Then you must be very adept at concealing those emotions."

   "I'm just imitating you."

   She expected her head to hit the wall, her throat to be crushed, so she braced herself instinctively. She would prefer it, at this point. It would make her feel less numb, maybe take her mind off of her death again, but nothing happened.

   Then, "How… contradictory."

   She must have looked confused on the outside, though she felt more surprised than anything.

   The softness returned to his eyes, but she couldn’t figure out why. Her insides twisted at the look. “…I wonder how much you think I’ve changed since we last met,” he went on. “Or how much you believe you’ve changed. …Does seeing me now make you feel nostalgic?”

   Her mouth twisted. "Almost," she muttered. She realized then that her hands were cutting off the circulation to her arms -- she had never let go from when she had broken the silence hours ago. She stretched her fingers and intertwined them in her lap.

   "Hm," he replied, eyes dragged to her arms, watching the blood flow back to where it belonged. A moment passed. "…Are you _ready_ to die, Haru?"

   "No… but I'm accepting it." Her eyes slid up to his again.

   "Hn."

   He gradually walked towards her, stopping only a foot from where she sat. He leaned down and placed his hands on the chair’s arms, caging her between them. His face was very close to hers. She held her breath.

   "It hurts..." he said, quietly, "...doesn't it?"

   She didn't answer.

   Then, he said something that completely contradicted everything that Haru thought of him at this point. He said something that would not mean very much to someone who did not -- even barely -- know how his mind worked, but meant so much to someone like Chiharu, who knew him far too well.

   "I do not wish for your death."

   Her face must have betrayed her shock, but her appearance to him was the last thing on her mind. What in the world had possessed Itachi to say such a thing? Was she dreaming?

   "But you gave me no choice when you misunderstood me when I had first attacked you….” He watched her face closely. “Do you still not understand? I was kidnapping you then only to ask you for an explanation, not for them. I told them I would interrogate you to get them off my back, knowing that it would leave me with two options, depending… on you." He paused, letting his gaze wander over her before returning to her eyes. "If you let me interrogate you, I would tell them about another jinchuuriki that I knew of. If not, then I would have to tell them about you.

   "I thought you would have been smarter than that, but I can see now I should not have resorted to you first."

   She felt her nails dig into her arms again. “You wanted me to trade myself for another jinchuuriki,” she muttered.

   His silence was confirmation enough. He would have extended her life, let her stay on the run, if she had provided him with enough information to distract the rest of Akatsuki. But she had assumed Itachi had changed, that Sasuke had been right about him, that he cared for nothing but himself. She had assumed she did not know him as well as she did, and now he had no choice but to be the villain everyone knew him to be.

   His eyes were intense on hers, almost as if he were using his Sharingan for more than body-binding and yet he wasn’t, but Haru now felt just as numb as she had earlier. Even knowing all this, as good and as bad as it felt, she would still die. Of this she was certain.

   "What are you waiting for?" whispered Haru, despite knowing that it shouldn't matter.

   "…For Pein to call for me," he said after a moment, stoic again, seeing that she did not want to discuss what he had told her any longer.

   Her spirits and hopes were crushed. However, she had one last question before she succumbed to acceptance. "Why did you tell me all of this?"

   He did not answer her. Instead, he stood and walked to the fire again, allowing the silence to come.

   Chiharu closed her eyes.

* * *

 


	8. Saviors

* * *

_It was dark as she walked from her home to the compound, her feet carrying her almost by instinct through the streets of Konoha. The mission had been long and difficult, and she was drained from healing herself and her teammates. She barely had time to change out of her uniform before a crow with red eyes had landed at her window, tapping three times at the glass before flitting away – a summoning._

_It was an all-too-familiar occurrence by now, and as exhausted as she was, she was excited to see what he had to show her, or tell her. Even if he just wanted to skip stones across the pond like he had once before, she was happy to meet him._

_The only sounds now were her footsteps and the light breeze rustling the trees overhead. Unconsciously she pulled her scoop neck shirt higher up her shoulder – even if there was no one on the streets to see her, she was in the habit of making sure her ANBU tattoo remained covered outside of missions. ANBU had to keep their identities as secret as possible, even around their own city – their abilities were too dangerous and their heads too sought after by their enemies. A chill ran down her spine as the breeze picked up, her mind wandering to last night’s mission. Her mask had been recognized and all attention turned on her; her notoriety, even with her secret identity, had nearly put her in a bad spot. She wondered if Itachi had the same problem on his missions yet._

_She walked into the compound, nodding at the Uchiha guard as she passed. The garden was on the opposite side of the small community, nestled among trees and smaller homes away from Fugaku and his family’s home. It was the one area of privacy available to them._

_Itachi sat cross-legged by the lily pads at the edge of the pond, underneath the garden’s only cherry tree. She sat next to him without a word, sensing his pensive aura and deciding to let him speak when he was ready._

_She watched as the full moon rose high enough over the compound to be reflected in the water of the pond. Suddenly there was a lot more light around the garden, even though it was still dark. She glanced at Itachi, hoping the light would reveal more of his expression, to find him looking back at her._

_“How was your mission?” he asked in earnest. Her exhaustion must have shown on her face._

_“Difficult,” she admitted, “but successful. Although my mask is beginning to get recognized by ANBU’s enemies.”_

_He chuckled and looked back out over the water. “Have you heard your new nickname?”_

_Her brow furrowed. This couldn’t be good. The only other nickname she’d heard among ANBU was that of the Copy-nin, who she and only a handful of others knew to be Hatake Kakashi. She’d seen firsthand what such a reputation could spark on missions, and the Copy-nin in particular had made it into the bingo book of many enemy organizations. “I have a nickname now?”_

_He smirked, watching the moon ripple in the water. “Specter,” he said._

_“Hmm.” But she nodded. As much as she dreaded the attention that came with such a persona, the name at least was fitting. It wasn’t a commonly found ability that a ninja could completely pass through other ninja in battle._

_Silence passed over them for several minutes. It was peaceful, but the pensive aura that Itachi still exuded started to make her nervous._

_“There’s something bothering you,” she said._

_Itachi sighed and his shoulders tensed. His pensive aura, she realized, was a meditation that her observation had broken. He stayed silent for a long time but she waited for him, knowing that whatever was bothering him was more important than she had initially surmised. He dropped his eyes to the lily pads in front of him._

_“Who are you loyal to, Haru?”_

_Her brow furrowed again. She decided to think about an answer before she thought about why he must be asking. “Konoha. Family. Friends.”_

_“In that order?”_

_She felt her body tense to match his. “…Yes, in that order.”_

_“You’re sure of that?”_

_“Are you?” she asked him instead. He knew better than to think she wouldn’t know her own loyalties – there was something else he felt unsure of that she knew was the cause of his behavior._

_He nodded solemnly, but assuredly. His eyes moved back to the reflection on the water, and then suddenly he stood, picking up a stone from the grass as he did. He threw it into the very center of the moon’s reflection, and watched as the stone skipped across the water to the opposite edge of the pond and the ripples spread across the surface, distorting the white sphere into hundreds of broken pieces. When the water settled and the moon was whole again, he turned to her and helped her to stand. At fourteen years old, she finally matched him in height. “…I have been assigned a mission directly from the Hokage and the elders.”_

_She felt her stomach twist. If he was telling her like this, if it was a mission directly from Konoha’s leaders, it had to be dangerous. “Does that mean you’ll be away for a while?”_

_He shook his head. “...I’ll be here,” he said quietly._

_Something felt off. Maybe it was the distant, solemn look in his eyes as he stared into hers, or the clenched fists at his sides, but now her worry wasn’t on the danger of his mission. She worried for him, for whatever was going on in his mind that made him act in a way she’d never seen him act before. It felt ominous. “Itachi, what’s wrong?”_

_“I can’t say anything about the mission,” he said, then whispered, “not here.”_

_“Then why are you telling me?” she demanded quietly. Suddenly the breeze through the trees and the sound of her voice seemed altogether too loud._

_He sighed, almost silent enough that she didn’t catch it. He looked askance for a second, perhaps back at the moon, before his eyes returned to hers. “I believe they will assign you a mission next. I don’t know how soon. But it will be related, and we can talk then. I think you’ll understand,” he said. He gently touched her arm and led her to a bench on the other side of the cherry tree, sitting with his body turned almost completely towards hers. She noted that they were away from any windows now._

_“Tensions are rising,” he continued, voice barely above a whisper. “Something is happening and we must know where our loyalties lie, and what that means. There are innocent people involved that don’t deserve the future currently laid out for them.”_

_“Itachi, you’re not making any sense.” She watched his eyes closely but they were nothing but steady and earnest. “Frankly, you’re scaring me.”_

_“I can’t change that,” he muttered, eyes soft. “I’m sorry. I believe you’ll understand soon enough… but I couldn’t leave you completely in the dark.”_

_It wasn’t really Itachi himself that scared her now, but the truth that rang in everything he had been saying. The seriousness of his tone, his eyes – she realized now why he had told her anything at all. She could feel the tension in the air now that she had missed walking into the compound, a tension she knew she wasn’t imagining. He wanted her to be on guard, to be aware that things were not as peaceful as she had been led to believe. Itachi knew more than she did, but if he was right about the future, she wouldn’t have to wait long to be thrust into the light._

_He took her hand in his, as if to confirm for her that this wasn’t all a dream. Holding hands with him had never felt so urgent._

_His eyes never wavered from hers._

_“Do you trust me?”_

* * *

 

Naruto leapt again, barely paying attention to what was going on around him. He could only focus on what lay ahead -- or, more accurately, _who_ lay ahead.

   Too many days had already passed since Haru's capture. The entire team was on their last straw with the situation, ready to raid Itachi's hideout if they had to. They were sick of constantly waiting for Haru's search party, sick of listening to Tsunade's lectures about why they couldn't simply "go after her". Naruto had even gone so far as to say that the Hokage was “ _full of crap_.”

   But even Tsunade was tired of waiting. They knew she was alive; it was not knowing _how_ alive she really was that truly sent everyone over the edge. They knew Itachi would not kill her -- she had been captured many times before without death being a threat -- but they knew nothing else.

   They were nearly driven towards insanity.

   _"At least Haru didn't go willingly,"_ Kakashi had said, something dark behind his eyes. Naruto could almost hear the subtext: _"Unlike Sasuke."_

   But Naruto barely found comfort in Kakashi's analysis. It _was_ true, but that didn't bring her back. The time for words had passed, and, as far as Naruto could see, action was all that they had left. If they wanted Haru back, then fighting was imminent. That was simply fact.

   "Naruto," Sakura called as she caught up with the kyuubi. "Can you see anything?"

   Said chuunin scanned the horizon twice. "No," he said, his voice strained with frustration. "But it has to be close. The forest in this area is beginning to look familiar, I think."

   Sakura sent him a strange look. "How can you tell?"

   "…I just can." Naruto looked to the stars to check that he was still heading in the right direction.

   Kakashi was suddenly at Naruto's side. "We need to stop and rest, Naruto," he said, his eyes holding a sense of finality. "We can't keep this up all night."

   "No," Naruto said, almost growling. "I know we're close."

   "But not close enough," Kakashi said, almost scolding. "Besides, if we are planning to fight Itachi, and possibly more Akatsuki, we need all the energy that we can possibly get. You know that."

   Naruto sighed, obviously angry. He did know that, but… "One more mile—"

   "No."

   "Fifty yards, then! I see a clearing over there…."

   Kakashi nodded, and they started a descent into the trees.

* * *

 

“Chiharu.”

   “…”

   “We are to go at dawn.”

   “…I see.”

* * *

 

Kakashi took first watch. The plan was only to rest for six hours, until sunrise. If they hadn’t already been traveling for over 24 hours he may have agreed with Naruto to keep going, but the Copy-nin knew even he couldn’t risk fighting while so fatigued. Their plan – or lack thereof – was crazy enough as it stood: somehow they had to find the hideout Haru had been taken to, for which all they had were Naruto’s heightened senses and those of Kakashi’s ninja hounds, and then somehow infiltrate it and take her without causing too much of a battle.

   He watched the fire as it burned. There was no logical way that they could succeed, no matter from which angle he looked at it, but they had to try. He had to have hope. They couldn’t abandon one of their own to Akatsuki, let alone a jinchuuriki and his best friend. The consequences of Akatsuki’s success would be devastating to all – not only would it bring them one beast closer to their ultimate goal, but Konohagakure would lose one of its best shinobi. And yet Kakashi had no idea if they could save her.

   His mind went back and forth between deciding what were mistakes and what were advantages – perhaps they shouldn’t have left without Tsunade’s knowledge so that they could have brought more shinobi with them, but perhaps this small cell, however inexperienced Sakura and Naruto were in comparison to older shinobi, would be better suited to sneak inside the hideout. Perhaps they should have left sooner, but maybe they wouldn’t have been as well prepared – and yet maybe by waiting they were already too late.

   He shook his head. They weren’t too late, he could feel it. But it was certainly too late to be thinking about any of this. He had to focus on the mission – what did he know about Akatsuki that could help them? What would they do if they were outnumbered? If they were caught before they could reach her? Even with so many unknowns he had to come up with some sort of a plan, with back-up plans. Anything.

   He thought of Chiharu. Was it possible her kekkei genkai would prevent her from dying if the extraction was successful? It had killed Gaara – would it kill her?

   A breeze moved through the trees and he passed his hand over his eyes. There were too many questions for his tired mind to answer. He needed sleep badly.

* * *

 

“Itachi?”

   “Hm?”

   “…Will it hurt?”

   “…”

   “Okay.”

* * *

 


	9. Children in a Land of Men

* * *

Haru watched as Itachi slowly opened the door at the end of the hall. They had been traveling down the long, seemingly endless hallway for quite some time, now. Silence had eased its way into their minds as their walk had continued, making it all the harder. Gradually, the situation pressed itself deeper and deeper into her consciousness, and by the time Itachi had touched the handle of the door that now loomed in front of them, Haru was, more or less, unhinged to the point of terror.

   She thought about every stone that she had been forced to step upon on her way here, about every apathetic thought that had crossed her mind, every word and action passed between her and her captor, every person that she left behind back in Konoha—

   She had come to realize -- more calmly, however, than she was now -- how important her friends were to her; how much her special people meant to her, all in all.

   She could never see any of them again.        

   Kakashi would always be the one that she left behind. The one she had abandoned with the guilt of her death on his shoulders forevermore, and there would never be any way around it, no way to give him freedom from the pain that would, surely, destroy his very being. To make matters worse, he could never find her -- nobody could, because Itachi was so intelligent and had made sure that no one could save her. She would be long-since dead by the time anyone even had a chance of finding her.

   She tried hard not to think about what he would do upon finding her cold, lifeless body, if he ever did. The pained expression that would linger for who knows how long on his normally carefree face, all because of her.

   …Haru felt sick.

   With a knot in her stomach, in her throat, she wondered when this had all started. When had she first fallen? When had Itachi’s small infatuation with her first ignited? When had she let it slip to… _anyone_ that she was a demon carrier?

   And when would it all end? When would she finally be given her way out, her freedom, her ticket to whatever better place existed?

   The answer came in the form of a cavernous room, more like an atrium, that housed two humongous stone hands and a monstrous, nine-eyed face. On four of the fingers on the hands stood a figure -- living or lifeless, Haru could neither distinguish nor care. The only thing that mattered was her situation, not the setting of it all.

   Then Itachi stepped into the room, and after a moment of forcing her mind numb, she followed after him, her unusually small steps taken against her will. She did not dare look at Itachi as she passed him, but she distinctly felt his gaze on her. She did not panic, making steady breaths to calm her heart, and she told herself that the only thing she had to do was walk and stand, and it would all be over, once and for all. Her friends would never have to worry about two jinchuuriki at once, or having to watch out for her every minute of every day. They wouldn’t have to go through another kidnapping, having to deal with the pain of the unknown. And Kakashi would never have to waste his time trying to show her how much he cared about her (she already knew, after all.)

   All she had to do was walk and stand, and then all the trouble she could cause would be reduced to nothing. All she had to do was --

   There was a sharp pain at the back of her neck, and darkness consumed her.

   Haru was frightened.

* * *

 

_“You did well, Chiharu.”_

_She sat kneeling on the tatami mats before her mother and father. The sun was just beginning to set, casting orange and red shadows over the room through the paper walls. Her eyes felt strange. She wondered if the hues had always been so sharp and vibrant._

_“Kazuo-san tells us you were instrumental in the success of the mission,” her father continued, “that they wouldn’t have gotten out alive without your abilities.”_

_She stayed silent. It had been her first mission as a chuunin, and Kazuo-sensei had specifically chosen a B-rank at the request of her parents, to test and prepare her for the harder missions sure to come. Kazuo had tried to argue that a C-rank would have been enough, especially if he put her in charge of it as he had been planning, but the Tanades had insisted. No daughter of theirs would accept anything less than the challenge a B-rank would provide, especially at her age._

_“Isn’t that true, Chiharu?” her mother prodded._

_“My teammates were equally as instrumental in the success of the mission,” Chiharu responded, nearly on automatic. “Their abilities and their maturity—“_

“Kazuo-san says you saved their lives, Chiharu,” her father interrupted. “That they were pinned down, your teammates badly injured, and you alone fought off the enemy and got them back on their feet. That they would not have made it out alive without you.”

_She hung her head. The light from the sunset seemed to be getting brighter and it hurt her eyes. She wished it would set already. She wished her parents would stop interrogating her._

_“Don’t be so modest,” her mother scolded. “You should be very pleased in your performance. Not even the Uchihas can boast such a feat as a 9 year old single-handedly completing a B-rank mission.”_

_“Uchiha Itachi has already completed two B-ranks,” Chiharu said quietly. “He’s 8.”_

_She could feel her parents’ glares but dared not look up to see them._

_“Uchiha Itachi has not yet passed the chuunin exams,” said her father. “And his missions were lead by Minazuka Yuuki, who has always been solely responsible for the success of her teams’ missions. Itachi cannot boast your same success.”_

_“You would do well to remember that your position as a Tanade already places you above the rest of Konoha’s shinobi,” her mother continued sternly. “Your individual abilities must be acknowledged for what they are. You did well on your first chuunin mission. You must use this success as a benchmark for all future successes, and that starts by admitting to what made you successful.”_

_Chiharu resisted the urge to shudder. The best she could do in this conversation was adhere to her parents’ training: shinobi must not show emotion. But she couldn’t help the way her fists clenched against her thighs._

_“As soon as your Keigan awakens the easier that success will be,” her father muttered, “and the sooner we can start your real training. Kazuo-san can only do so much for a Tanade.”_

_The hues around the room began to fade to maroon and purple. When Chiharu did not respond, her mother looked towards the door, watching the sunset slowly change its colors, before she turned back to her daughter and said, “You should go train with the Uchihas before it gets too late. Mikoto-san insisted today.”_

_The young girl nodded. She knew that meant Mikoto-san wanted to make her dinner – it was her impression that the Tanade didn’t properly nourish their children, but of course she would never insinuate that to Chiharu’s parents. Tanade believed in simple foods, whatever would provide enough energy until the next meal. As a clan of healers, what couldn’t be kept healthy naturally would take care of itself thanks to their kekkei genkai, and they believed this to save them time and resources. Chiharu’s closer ties with the Uchiha kept her well-fed in comparison to her cousins._

_Without another word her parents rose and left the room, and once the door was closed again she let out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. “As soon as my Keigan awakens…” she repeated under her breath. Her hands went to rub her eyes and her mouth set in a hard line. She should go to the Uchiha compound before she thought too much about her mission, about her parents’ conversation. Her feet carried her to the door._

_The walk to the compound seemed shorter than she remembered by the time she reached the gates. She’d muted her thoughts and simply watched the end of the sunset as she walked, noting the way the sky changed as the stars became visible above her. Even they seemed brighter than usual._

_Itachi was the one to greet her at the door. She’d expected Mikoto, his mother, since she’d been the one to invite her, but she much preferred Itachi to the rest of the Uchiha anyways. His grin at seeing her on his threshold made her temporarily forget about her mission._

_“Mother said you’d be here to train tonight,” Itachi said as he let her in and she began taking off her shoes. “Normally she doesn’t like us to train when it’s dark but Father said it’s good practice for our eyes.”_

_Chiharu stilled briefly walking up the steps into the house. She scratched the back of her head and continued inside but she knew Itachi had caught her reaction. He always noticed things like that._

_“Hey, are you okay, Chiharu?” he asked immediately._

_She forced a smile and nodded. “I think I must be hungry,” she explained. “It’s been a really long day.”_

_Itachi’s eyes lit up in realization, but he dropped his voice as they walked nearer to the kitchen. “You had your first chuunin mission today, right?”_

_She glanced over at him. She could tell he was excited for her, even as he stopped talking as much. He always talked more with her when he wasn’t around his parents, and truly she was even worse around hers, but even at their ages they’d learned to read each other for such emotions when they couldn’t show them. “Yeah,” she said, unable to match his enthusiasm. “B-rank.”_

_He nodded, and gave her a look as they paused outside the kitchen, his hand on the door. “You’ll tell me about it later?” he whispered._

_She hesitated for a second, her mouth terse, but nodded._

_Dinner passed surprisingly quickly with Mikoto taking over most of the conversation. Fugaku was working late with the Konoha Police Force, and his absent stoicism could be felt in Mikoto’s relaxed enthusiasm. Sasuke had started speaking that morning, and she was pleased to report that his first words were “Okaa” (mother.) She congratulated Chiharu on her mission but at seeing her reaction simply smiled and started talking about Itachi and his upcoming genin missions. She’d made stir fry with cabbage in a secret sauce, Chiharu’s favorite, and dango for dessert, which the two-year-old Sasuke had grabbed out of Itachi’s hand before he could take a bite, much to the table’s laughter._

_Itachi dragged Chiharu out to the edge of the forest after the dishes had been cleared away, two pouches of kunai slung over his shoulder. “I learned a new technique,” he was saying. “I tried it during my mission yesterday and took out three bandits at once.”_

_They stopped in the small clearing between the wall of the compound and the edge of the forest where a dozen targets were set up at different heights and distances. “You had bandits on your mission?” Chiharu asked in wonder. She’d never encountered bandits on her C-rank missions before._

_“Mhmm,” Itachi conceded dismissively, turning to her as he dropped the kunai pouches on the ground. “You still have to tell me how your B-rank went!”_

_She hesitated. She’d promised she would but now she wondered how much she could tell him. Even her parents didn’t know the details. “We were sent to guard a kind of envoy from Konoha to the border,” she began slowly. “They expected an attempted assassination by a small group of missing nin from Sand. When we were halfway there, Kazuo-sensei heard them coming, but they were using decoys and they caught us off guard from the back.”_

_Itachi listened, eyes wide. “But you’re not hurt,” he said._

_Her lips twisted and she shook her head. “No, I jumped away in time,” she half-lied. “There were only three of them but we fought for a while, and they wore down my teammates pretty easily. Kazuo-sensei didn’t have any trouble, but the others were hurt pretty badly and he got pinned down trying to move them to safety. If I didn’t do something they would have moved on to attack our client, so…”_

_His brow furrowed. “So…?” he prodded. “What did you do?”_

_She sucked in a breath, trying to make herself say the words. But she couldn’t lie to Itachi, and even if she could he would know. He may have been younger than her but he was much more astute when it came to people, especially to her. She breathed out and crossed her arms, pinning him with a stern look. “If I tell you what really happened…” she said softly, “…you have to promise me you won’t tell anyone.”_

_He met her gaze with concern, but nodded immediately. “You know I wouldn’t.”_

_“I know, it’s just…” She looked down at her feet and wiggled her toes in the bright moonlight. She wasn’t used to her eyesight being so acute and it made her squint._

_Itachi craned his head and caught her gaze again, his face pensive. “It’s about your kekkei genkai, isn’t it?”_

_She started, her body going tense and still, eyes wide._

_“I’m sorry,” he said, then sat cross-legged on the ground and pulled her down with him. They sat facing each other but he withdrew his hands from her. “It’s just that your eyes have been bothering you all evening. You kept rubbing them at dinner. I figured… since you seemed nervous…”_

_Her lips twisted again and she felt her throat start to constrict, but she nodded and swallowed. “…You’re right.”_

_“Tell me what happened, Haru-chan.”_

_“Okay.” She took a deep breath. “They were pinning my teammates down. So I rushed at the one who had Kazuo-sensei but he saw me too soon, and he pulled out his katana…” She swallowed, her mouth suddenly dry. “…I ran into it. Right here.” She pulled up her shirt partway to show him the spot just underneath her ribs, where there was no bandage, no wound, no scar. “…I thought I was dead. But then my eyes felt like they were on fire…”_

_Itachi nodded. He knew a similar feeling from when his Sharingan had opened only a couple months prior._

_Her eyes started to tear up at the memory – she could still feel the burning. She had doubled over as the katana was pulled from her abdomen, one hand flying to the hole in her stomach and her other pressing over her eyes in panic. She could hear one of the other missing nin moving towards the carriage in which their target sat and she knew she had to do something. Kazuo was pinned to the ground, literally, kunai in his shoulders as the missing nin kept him from escaping and her fellow chuunin were unconscious, hurt just as badly as Chiharu was._

_“Then they just stopped hurting,” she continued after a moment. “And my stomach stopped hurting… I looked down and saw the blood but the wound was gone. And then when I looked around at everyone I could see… I saw…”_

_“You saw inside of them?” Itachi supplied. He’d heard many times before how the Tanade’s kekkei genkai worked. It was what made their clan the best medics in Konoha, but also what made so many of them choose the shinobi path over the medical path. It was too powerful, they believed, to waste off of the battlefield, and the Fourth Shinobi World War four years ago had only strengthened that belief in them._

_Chiharu nodded. “I realized what it meant and I was almost too scared to move, but the missing nin were almost to our client so I started fighting. I caught the one missing nin off guard – he thought he’d killed me – and I got him off of Kazuo-sensei. He got up still hurt but the two of us fought off the missing nin by ourselves. I figured out how to use it… the Keigan… as fast as I could in the middle of the fight. It was… messy…”_

_He nodded, letting her continue at her own pace._

_“…After they were dead I had to figure out how to heal everyone,” she said, her eyes distant as her mind’s eye replayed everything from her memory. “Kazuo was fine but Minari and Tenshin were bleeding out so I had to hurry. I got my hands inside of them and then… I don’t know. I could tell it hurt them at first but I got the hang of it. I… I healed them. All three of them.” She looked down at her hands, uncrossing them and lifting them palm up._

_Itachi watched her, concern in his eyes, before he spoke again. “…You’ll have to tell them soon, Haru-chan. If they find out you hid it from them…”_

_“I know,” she blurted, “but – I’ve seen what happens, Itachi-chan. How you get trained once you get it. It’s hard now – can you imagine how it’ll be once they know I have the Keigan?”_

_He grabbed her hands, trying to break her from her worry. “It will be worse the longer you keep it from them,” he muttered. “The training will be hard, but I know they’d punish you for lying, and that’d be worse. I don’t think you can avoid it.”_

_She hung her head. Of course he was right, but…_

_“But I’ll be here,” he reassured her. “I can’t do much for your training but I’ll help any way I can.”_

_She sniffled, then nodded as she swallowed back the tears. She offered him a small smile, unable to help it. His reassurances meant a lot to her, more than she could express in words. “…Show me your new technique.”_

_He smiled back at her and nodded before standing back up. She moved to the edge of the clearing to stay out of his way, glancing up at the stars while he retrieved three kunai from his pouch. The light didn’t hurt her eyes like it had earlier, but she wasn’t smiling anymore. She would have to tell them after her next mission. She couldn’t help but think of what she’d seen her cousins go through, and she shuddered knowing her parents would be even harder on her._

_“You watching?” Itachi called out to her. He smirked at her when her eyes moved back to him. “Blink and you’ll miss it, Haru-chan.”_

_She managed to smile at him again. The pain would come later. For now, she had Itachi._

* * *

 

Itachi carried her to the pedestal underneath the giant hands of the statue and laid her down. He took one last look at her before taking his place among the four other Akatsuki present: Kisame, Tobi, Deidara, and Pein, who was only present in hologram. The haste with which this particular sealing had to occur meant Pein would rather them not waste time waiting for any more Akatsuki despite the massive amounts of chakra the ceremony would now consume from those present.

   But if Itachi knew anything about Konoha’s shinobi, he knew none of this mattered. One way or another the extraction would not be completed.

   In the week he had held Chiharu captive awaiting Pein’s decision, he had resolved to accept that much. Now it was only a matter of waiting to see how Akatsuki’s failure would unfold.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This arc of the story is almost over! I know it may seem like I'm dragging it out but I promise it's for good reason ;)  
> Thank you all so much for reading and leaving kudos, and for leaving such kind comments! It really means a lot to me, and I love hearing what you all think of the story. <3


	10. Ashes

* * *

_A blanket of snow covered the remains of the great Tanade House._

_“Only one who stands on the very edge of memory and sadness,” spoke the tall, blonde shinobi in an admiring yet dour tone as she read from the text in her hands, “can see the great, humble walls of the vast building, a dark stone grey in its few columns, and a quiet lighter grey in its walls. Such a person could see the many almost-stoic brothers and sisters and cousins running around the porch and main garden, which at this time of year would be covered in sakura blossoms; mothers and aunts and grandmothers tending the beautiful orchids, lotus, carnations, pansies, and snapdragons of the personal gardens by the narrow windows. They might see the eldest sons and daughters in the training ground of cobblestone and dirt, could see a few select children training in the elaborate inside training areas, because of their unique abilities that set them apart from others and made them much, much stronger by comparison. These were the easier times of the Tanade Clan, before the great and sad disappointment that was the Period of Suspicion._

   _“Then, one who stood on the very peak of betrayal and feudal spirit might see the youngest sons and daughters put through horrifyingly grueling training and difficult tests and trials for uniqueness; the angry and weary stares of parents and grandparents aimed at one another, aimed at their children, aimed at their best friends, even at their sister clan; pre-teens who have been pushed far, far past their breaking point, their blank, cruel stares passing them off as perfect, emotionless tools at the disposal of the clan and the village. One little girl in particular lived among this family, who had been pushed so far past her limit that she might make plans to rid herself of the memories of mistakes, beatings for her mistakes, and punishment for her beatings. Thus came the night of the Tanade House Fire, which brought the clan to its knees, lungs long-since failed for excess of smoke and lack of oxygen. They might see this one devastated girl running through the forest, punishing herself in every way possible for her greatest mistake._

_“One who stood tall on the boundary of imagination and reality would see how deserving this clan was of the Fire, for they had committed many, many horrible crimes for selfish gain. They would see how the clan had volunteered an infant of their own blood to seal away and carry a terrible five-tailed demon, just so that they could use the poor baby as a sick and dangerous threat to any who opposed them. They might see how they had accused each other of planning to destroy the village; how they accused each other of letting loose a monster in a time of depression, loss, and destruction for the village, when they just as easily could have used their angry energy to help rebuild the village; and how two certain members of this clan had treated their child just to make her the ultimate shinobi, to have created the greatest tool of the village._

_“But any one man who could gaze upon this almost-endless heap of ashes and destruction and see all of these gruesome images and stories… would_ not _be a man that I would like to meet in my lifetime,” the shinobi admitted dryly to her apprentice, closing the book that she had been reading out of. “Jiraiya wrote this, years ago… in a tribute book to Konohagakure. It was different, reading the stories of the village in his style, rather than what he usually wrote.”_

_Her apprentice looked up at her in wonder through her pink tresses. “Did all of that really happen then, shishou? The Fire, and everything? The demon carrier?”_

_Tsunade nodded sadly. “Yes. And you know who the demon carrier is, Sakura.”_

_Sakura stared in confusion at the book in her sensei’s hands for a moment, trying to think of any jinchuuriki that she knew besides Naruto. “…I can’t think of anyone. The only jinchuuriki that I know are Naruto and Gaara, and Shukaku was sealed only a few months ago, anyways…”_

_The fifth Hokage sighed. “Her last name is Tanade.”_

_Sakura thought hard again. “Well, the only survivor of the Fire had to be Chiharu, right? She’s the only Tanade left, but… if she were a jinchuuriki, I’m sure she would have told us by now.”_

_Tsunade turned to Sakura. “Chiharu is a demon carrier, Sakura. It‘s strange… but I suppose she only told Kakashi and Naruto, if you never found out. And I believe that the one incident in which you possibly could have seen the Gobi appear through her, you were knocked out.”_

_Sakura was silent. Chiharu was a jinchuuriki! And after three and a half years of knowing her…. Sakura was, needless to say, shocked._

_Tsunade wasn’t surprised at her reaction. Instead, she simply turned and looked out at the field of ash and snow, pulling her arms closer to her body. Under any other circumstance, Tsunade would not have been out in this freezing winter weather, but she was training her apprentice in the history of the village’s current geography, (something that she probably should have done in the fall,) but if she didn’t do it now, it would never get done._

_“…I had seen this field a lot when I used to take walks with my family, or with Ino a long time ago, but I never would have imagined…” said Sakura in awe, as she dragged her eyes across the landscape._

_“Mhmm. Just think of how the third Hokage felt when he had to deal with the fresh remains so long ago. I can’t even empathize.”_

_Sakura nodded._

_“Well,” said Tsunade suddenly, after a moment of silence. “Let’s go. I want to show you the Memorial Stone.”_

* * *

 

Sakura stared in awe and anger at the entrance to the Akatsuki lair. Chiharu was in there somewhere, possibly having the Gobi -- and her life -- sucked totally out of her. Sakura almost thought, _Well, maybe it would better off without that monster inside of her_ , but stopped herself dead when she remembered that, unlike Gaara’s situation, they didn’t have anyone who knew how to perform that forbidden jutsu of Chiyo’s; even if they did, nobody could willingly give up their life for her, and nobody was about to let their friend sacrifice themselves.

   _Our best bet to get her out of there alive is to stop Akatsuki before they have the chance to finish their jutsu,_ Sakura thought instead, glancing at the blonde ninja beside her. Naruto was fidgeting in his hiding spot beside Sakura with the anticipation. He and Kakashi’s ninja hounds had sniffed out the cave within only an hour of leaving their campsite, before Kakashi had Pakkun use his small size to sneak in and scout out the situation.

   Kakashi glanced to his left, where his team crouched trying to listen for any movement within the lair. He reminded himself that he would need to thank Pakkun profusely after this was over. Without him, they could have been too late to save Haru. But Pakkun had told the team earlier that she wasn’t even in the area where the extraction would take place yet -- she was simply sitting in some dark room in the lair, unmoving but awake, but that as Pakkun was sneaking back out, he’d heard another voice in the room followed by footsteps. It was starting soon.

   “Okay,” whispered Kakashi tensely. “Sakura, you’re first.”

   Said kunoichi sprung from her hiding place and leapt to the entrance. She squatted down and slipped something through a crack behind the boulder, which blocked their path. A few seconds later, a muffled _boom_ sounded and the boulder crumbled. The kunoichi leapt through the entrance, and silence overcame the remaining pair. Sakura was to move quietly inside and determine whether her explosive had been detected – her chakra control made her best suited to determine trouble and get out quicker than her team could.

   Kakashi counted out ten seconds in his head, and right at ten, having heard no signs of trouble inside, turned to Naruto. “Alright,” he said. “Go, Naruto. Remember to stay with Sakura when you find her.”

   Naruto nodded quickly and leapt away to the entrance, looking around him for good measure before dashing inside.

   Kakashi counted to ten again and then it was time. He leapt inside, despite the sick feeling in his stomach spinning faster and faster at the thought of what he might see once he finally reached Haru.

   There were no voices, but he could feel the massive amounts of chakra from deep within the cave even from the entrance.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this one is so short! I may post another chapter later to make up for it. But thank you all so much for reading :)


	11. A New Fire

* * *

It was one of those rare moments where she hated Itachi for being right. It went beyond hatred, she decided.

   They were beginning to seal the Gobi. It felt like they were pulling fire from every pore and every opening and every possible place on her body, scorching, burning, singeing, _hurting._ And what could she do about it? Nothing. Nothing but live for a moment longer and accept it until it finishes her off. Nothing but silently cry as visions of her friends, even her family, flit around inside her diminishing head. She couldn’t see, couldn’t hear, couldn’t taste, couldn’t smell – could only feel the white-hot fire absorbing her entire being…

   …killing her.

* * *

 

Meanwhile, Naruto screamed as he launched himself at the first Akatsuki he saw, which incidentally happened to be Itachi. His claws reached for the Uchiha’s face but were kicked away and the kyuubi was thrown to the ground. Itachi slowly returned to the sealing jutsu.

   _“If you distract all of them at once, I believe you can completely disable the jutsu and rush Chiharu out of there,”_ Pakkun had said when he returned. _“You just need to keep yourselves together--”_ he had pointed to Kakashi, Naruto, and Sakura _“--because the sight of her in there might just make you lose your grip. You’ve got to get in and out of there as quickly as possible.”_

   Naturally Pakkun had been right, at least about Naruto losing his grip, but as soon as Naruto hit the floor, he put the plan into action, realizing what he had just done.

   “Argh!” Naruto said, but immediately put his hands together. “Kage Bunshin no Jutsu!” Five Narutos appeared behind each Akatsuki member. Within the same second, Kakashi and Sakura leapt to the spot where Haru was projected to fall once the jutsu was interrupted, arms ready. They couldn’t afford even a second more than they’d already wasted – Itachi may have been content to ignore Naruto’s attempts, perhaps believing they would fail anyways, but the Akatsuki leader’s reaction likely wouldn’t be the same.

   Naruto focused on his jutsu intently. Then, every clone reared back their fist.

* * *

 

The fire was gone.

   And truthfully it worried Chiharu -- why would it suddenly disappear? Was she already dead? Why was she conscious?

   But then there was a feel of falling, a feel of halting, and a feel of wind, so she knew something else was wrong. She wasn’t dead, because she could feel the burning sensation of breathing in her lungs, the ache in her stomach where the Gobi’s seal still lied.

   But she miraculously found out that the demon was no longer being extracted, for she could smell what should only be hallucinations of her loved ones, could hear someone else’s labored breathing in her ear. She still couldn’t see, still felt only half-conscious, but she knew that she was okay.

   She was alive.

* * *

 

Kakashi wished he could take any one glance at Chiharu, just to prove to himself that it was really her that he was carrying, but there was absolutely no time -- they had to get Chiharu and Naruto back to Konoha as soon as physically possible, lest they risk Akatsuki catching up to them when they were alone and so few in number. It had been risky enough to enter the lair in the first place, but the last thing they needed right now was to get killed in the middle of the forest by Konoha’s current greatest enemy.

   So Kakashi focused on running and leaping faster than ever before while still dodging trees and anything else that might decide to get in his way. Kakashi led the way, Naruto behind him, while Sakura brought up the rear. They were still miles away from the village, but at the speed they were traveling and knowing this time exactly what direction to head in, it wouldn’t take long.

   Kakashi held fast to Haru, praying, hoping, shouting in his head that she would be fine – and that she would awaken soon.

   Then the kunais started flying from behind, and one skim on the sleeve of Kakashi’s shirt was all it took to send him flying even faster, if possible, through the forest, more intent than ever to get far, far away from the cloaked group that now followed them.

   But Itachi had always been faster than almost every ninja in Konoha.

   Kakashi growled furiously as Itachi caught up beside him, knives in hand. Kakashi leapt to the sky to avoid him, and could see the outline of Konoha easily on the horizon. They were _so close_.

   But Itachi knew this, and seemed to be attempting everything he could think of to keep them from reaching their destination. He jumped after Kakashi easily, catching him by the foot and throwing him to the ground. But both he and Chiharu vanished in a puff of smoke, and were instead fifty yards ahead of the Uchiha with the rest of their group. Itachi frowned and leapt after them once more.

   It was Sakura he dragged down next as she attempted to knock him out mid-leap. She sprung right back up and shot at him, fist reared back and flaming with chakra. Itachi spun mid-air and grabbed her fist as she threw it, spinning completely around again as she turned painfully with him before he threw her into a nearby tree. He pressed on, passing Naruto gracefully. But Naruto threw a wire netting at him as he passed, entangling him with metallic string strong and thin enough to amputate a few limbs, had Itachi not used a replacement jutsu before flinging ten shuriken at the chuunin and leaping further away.

   Sakura had caught up by then though, and taking a lead from Naruto threw another wire netting at Itachi once she was close enough, this time anticipating his replacement jutsu with a barrage of kunai and another wire netting. He dodged all but the edge of netting that caught his foot, and with a surprised scowl disappeared into the treeline, his foot too tangled to run without disposing of the net first. Sakura flew past where he’d disappeared and triumphantly caught up to her team.

   After an hour more of travel, Kakashi hit the ground, sprinting easily through the gates of Konoha so fast that the guard ninja at the side didn’t even have the time to note the hair color, let alone figure out who in the world could possibly be running that fast into the village. Kakashi slowed down a bit, heading for Hokage Mansion while Naruto halted at the gates to explain to the guards what was going on and that it would be fairly wise to get as many skilled ninja on watch and guard as possible, favorably the really strong ones. Then he charged on to follow his sensei to the Hokage, leaving the guards in a distressed, confused, and panicky scramble. It was then that Sakura flew past in a frantic pink blur, only serving to confound them further.

* * *

 

   Tsunade stamped her last piece of paperwork for the day, sighing contentedly before taking a quick sip of sake and standing from her seat. She stretched exasperatedly, ready to finally get some sleep, no matter how early into the afternoon it was -- she had been doing those papers since noon the day prior, and she was well ready to leave the office and go home -- to settle in with some different scenery.

   So she was just about ready to scream when Shizune ran in, scared out of her wits.

   “Oh, what now?!” Tsunade demanded, shoulders slumping.

   “Lady Tsunade!” Shizune said, clipped and almost hysterical. “They’re back! They’re back! And ohhhh--!”

   “Who’s back?” the Hokage inquired, now slightly worried, but still mostly annoyed.

   “Kakashi’s team!! And--”

   “What?!” Tsunade yelled, stepping around her desk. “Did they--”

   “They got Chiharu back, yes, but--”

   “Oh thank Kami,” she sighed sitting back on her desk. “Are they alright?”

   “Mostly yes, but--!”

   “We’d better get Chiharu to a hospital -- what are we doing dawdling here?”

   “Lady Tsunade!” Shizune shouted, but blushed when she saw that she finally had the Hokage’s attention. “Akatsuki followed them.”

   “SAY WHAT??” Tsunade demanded, grabbing her assistant’s shoulders in complete disbelief.

   “Akatsuki followed them here -- they’re somewhere around the borders of Konoha. Team Kakashi got in safely, and Kakashi is with Chiharu at the hospital right now, but--”

   Tsunade’s face was stern -- completely and gravely serious to the point of looking ten years older than she was. “Get ANBU and all elite shinobi on every corner of the village border; get every woman and child to safety, with the exception of ninjas above chuunin rank; send notifications to every ninja on missions to pull back and get home, but to be on their guard; make sure that every single ninja is ready for battle as of immediately. We need every possible protection -- alert the Kazekage and see what he can do… this might last for a long time…”

   Shizune nodded as she rapidly scrawled down Tsunade’s instructions, but paused for a moment. “Lady Tsunade… just how long do you mean?”

   “…Months, maybe; there’s no telling.” The Hokage walked speedily to the office door.

   She turned back, an extremely mixed emotion written across her face.

   “We could be at war.”

* * *

 


	12. Remains

* * *

Should Tsunade look back to one month ago, when she had so grimly stated that Konoha might be at war, she would shake her head at herself for thinking too far ahead. She had overreacted back then, to put it bluntly, but to rationalize the situation, any sane kage would have assumed the very same… or at least Tsunade thought so.

   ANBU had kept guard around the village for two weeks, finding not even a hint of any kind of chakra or activity around the city that shouldn’t have been there. A group of ANBU had even gone so far as to scout around the entire country, covering as much ground as a group their size could, in search of any sign of Akatsuki whatsoever that Tsunade hadn’t dubbed as the initial ‘attack,’ when Itachi and some other Akatsuki had chased Team Kakashi all the way to the village gates. Not even Jiraiya could detect that Akatsuki were around during the weeks in which Tsunade was most cautious.

   So, to say the least, the situation could not have been stranger.

   The Hokage held countless meetings to discuss what could be happening, why it could be happening, what had already happened, and what could happen very soon, but they all ended in fruitless discussions on what to do -- which was little to nothing as the weeks passed. Too much was unknown, and a village could only take so many precautions before it simply became ridiculous. So Tsunade called off the country-wide searches after a couple of weeks, and after three weeks, called off caution for Akatsuki altogether, and for once, the village elders agreed with her decisions.

   However, there was still the matter of a certain shinobi’s health.

   Chiharu had been in critical condition during the first week back from Akatsuki’s clutches and Tsunade had been extremely worried about her, for Haru’s body would normally have healed itself in a matter of days, thanks to the combined forces of the Gobi and Haru’s kekkei genkai. But she was barely healing at all -- Kakashi would be healing much faster if he were in her position, which was saying a lot. The medics of the hospital were having a very difficult time doing anything about her, for not only was her body refusing to heal, but nobody knew the extent of what Akatsuki’s jutsu had done. And if something _had_ been damaged during the extraction, no one would know what to do anyways -- for when had they ever had the chance to learn about the extents and procedures and whatever else of healing a jinchuuriki who had, possibly, had their demon half-sealed? All Konoha knew of these things was what had happened to the Kazekage some months ago, which had been under an entirely different situation (being that he had been brought back to life by a forbidden jutsu that killed the woman performing it.)

   The medics did the best they could and Tsunade helped as much as her abilities allowed her, but nothing they did seemed to help.

   The second week of Haru’s hospitalization brought many strange developments to her condition. On the eighth day of her coma, all of her bruises and cuts healed overnight -- a confounding find for the doctors when they arrived the next morning. Tsunade’s and Kakashi’s hopes quickly escalated when they heard, but nothing improved over the next two days and they looked on at her comatose form in disappointment, wishing desperately that something would happen again. Then, towards the end of the week, Kakashi witnessed her eyes opening for a few seconds, before she winced and fell into her seemingly never-ending slumber once more. The medics took a look at her heart monitor’s history from that moment and found that her heartbeat had indeed increased while her eyes were open, but nothing more happened for the next few days, and whatever hopes Kakashi had accumulated during the few seconds her eyes were open were quickly extinguished that night.

   After another week, Chiharu would have awoken for an entire hour, though incapable of speech, making Kakashi smile for the first time in what felt like years. Her body healed all broken bones in a day, and then her skin started to regain its natural color and body heat, her hands no longer clammy and the dark circles under her eyes gone. Her fingers began to twitch every now and then, and her eyes danced behind her lids every so often, hinting at the possibility of dreams. The medics had finally decided to just stand back and let her body take care of itself, since nothing they did seemed to have any effect, and her body seemed to heal just as well by itself.

   It was the next week that really shocked them.

   She had awoken for one minute, fallen asleep in another, and then started screaming in the next. Nobody knew what they could possibly do (but when had this ever been different over the past weeks?). The heart monitor blew a fuse as the I.V.’s flew out in a burst of chakra and steam, and the rest of her injuries simply vanished. The screaming stopped as soon as it had begun, and Kakashi stood beside her, bewildered and wide-eyed, as she awoke once more, sat up, and went ahead in asking, clearly irritated, what in the world she was doing in a hospital when she had a kekkei genkai that healed her body for her. The medics were speechless, and Haru silently stood up, picked up her clothes, and walked to the bathroom to change out of her hospital gown, mumbling something about coffee and mentally unsound medics.

* * *

 

In her coma, she had dreamed – only of memories, unsurprisingly, but at least she had dreams at all.

   In one, she recalled the night before the extraction.

* * *

 

   _It was late. Chiharu stood from her chair and went to watch the fire, trying to forget that Itachi was in the room. Maybe if he hadn’t been there her head wouldn’t be swimming trying to come to terms with where she was while also trying to come to terms with his intentions. Of course, he seemed to read her mind._

_“It won’t work,” he muttered, leaning against the opposite wall. She turned around._

_“Maybe I knew that,” she said, arms crossed, but it wasn’t too hard to figure out that she had indeed thought it might work. That at the very least it was worth the attempt._

   _“I refuse to think so,” Itachi said, and beckoned her to him with unreadable eyes. “And you should know better than to try and flatter yourself by thinking it. It’s unbecoming of someone so powerful to lie to yourself.”_

_She walked to him slowly, and came to a stop a foot away from him. “What makes you think that matters to me now?”_

_He would have nodded, if he weren’t so naturally emotionless, as any perfect shinobi should be. “You make a fair point. But I wouldn’t want you to leave this world with such false ideas in your head.”_

_“Would you rather me suffer in some pitiful depression? Reality isn’t always best, you know,” she responded, in a tone that made her sound different, more childlike, but more mature. She was always different around this man. She lowered her voice. “Maybe I wanted to pretend for a while.”_

_“Hm,” he voiced in agreement, and his low pitch made her lean forward unintentionally. He regarded her pensively. “…Would you pretend for me then?”_

_She frowned at this. What could he mean by that?_

_“Pretend you’re in a fairytale for a while. Pretend you’re not going to die tomorrow,” he muttered, pushing himself off of the wall to stand within her space. The intimacy of his proximity made her nervous against her better judgment. “…Perhaps pretend I’m someone else.”_

_“Why?” she asked, quietly, fighting the urge to dream with her eyes open as he requested of her._

_“Because that’s all I could be to you, now, anyways. All I ever have been. You might as well play along….” He had somehow pulled her even closer to him, and suddenly her back was against the wall, Itachi’s head leaning on it over her shoulder, his breath even over her skin. She closed her eyes, almost against her will – but she knew she was in control this time. “…I can only ever be a fairytale to you.”_

_“…why?” she asked again, her voice unsteady, though her mind was fading to so many different situations she could be in. She sighed, feeling his hair brush lightly over her cheek._

_“Because you may die tomorrow, and because whatever you feel about me shouldn’t be felt by a Konoha shinobi towards an Akatsuki missing-nin.” Despite the danger in his words, his voice was all too soothing. “Truly, what I’m about to do should be forbidden. I almost wish it was.”_

_And Itachi turned his head, dragged his lips from behind her ear to a breath from her own, and then he kissed her, dark and miserable, short and everlasting, burning it into her memory, because she shouldn’t deserve such torture from her captor and enjoy it._

* * *

 

   Then, Chiharu dreamed about a simpler time, a year before her capture, a moment with such easiness that she was surprised she could even experience and recall such a moment.

* * *

 

_“Yo,” Kakashi waved as he landed beside Haru in tandem with her steps._

_“Hey,” Haru said, smiling a little at him._

_“Where are you off to so early in the morning?” Kakashi asked, hands in his pockets._

_“Training grounds… or the Memorial Stone if I feel up to it.”_

_Kakashi glanced at Haru for a moment before turning his gaze back to the road. “If you feel up to it?”_

_“That’s always been the case, you know. It’s hard enough for me to visit them when they haven’t been plaguing my mind all day, so as long as I keep my mind on training, I’ll be able to pay my respects without… well…” Haru explained and sighed, her voice almost monotonous from the weight of her inner grief._

_Kakashi didn’t know quite what to say – he had the same problem she did, after all -- so he nodded and just walked with her in comfortable silence. Haru didn’t seem to mind._

_“Have you heard anything about Naruto yet?” Haru asked casually. Of course he hadn’t heard anything -- nobody had -- but it was something easy to converse about, something that they shared like emotions on._

_“No, but he’s only supposed to be gone for about a year more, I think,” Kakashi said._

_“Well, I can’t say I’m not looking forward to his return, but when he finally does come back, I have a feeling that Akatsuki will begin to pick up their game again -- Orochimaru, too, from what I’ve gathered.”_

_“Even if they do, at least we’ll have one of the most determined ninjas Konoha’s seen in a long time, as Tsunade would say,” Kakashi replied, watching the sky for a minute before turning his gaze back to his teammate. “But how about we forget about all of that for an hour or two and just relax somewhere?”_

_“How could I not expect that from you?” Haru muttered, chuckling._

_“Come on, I know you haven’t had a decent cup of coffee in months…. And I’m rather craving it right now, to be completely honest.”_

_Haru laughed out loud -- the first time in weeks -- and could already taste it on her tongue. She honestly hadn’t had a single thought on her coffee addiction since the Hokage began giving her lengthier missions, and she started to not have time to even act like a normal human being, instead of being the heartless ninja that every mission requires._

_“Alright,” she said._

_It was common for them to take advantage of temporary peace, finding comfort in each other’s company. Coffee just so happened to be the usual medium._

* * *

 

It hadn’t taken long for Haru to escape out of the bathroom window after she had finished getting dressed. After the initial shock of calculating how long she had been out, her only desire had been to escape. She spent enough of her time at the hospital during her short “off-seasons” of sorts from taking missions anyways; she wasn’t about to play patient for another day. Of course, when she and Kakashi were in their little off-seasons, almost every other ninja of Konoha was pummeled with extra missions, meaning more hospital patients and the need for more efficient medics. Haru was usually the medic nin called upon, for she moved through patients in a heartbeat. Tsunade often offered her a longer off-season to assist the hospital, but Haru always refused -- she’d take a week-long A-rank mission over a week of medic-duty any day.

Haru walked home. She didn’t run -- she knew nobody would start to freak out about her taking so long in the bathroom until at least fifteen minutes had gone by silently. Besides, she needed the fresh air of Konoha in her system again. She had been stuck inside rocky atriums, dusty holding rooms, and stuffy hospitals for far too long -- not to mention she hadn’t been simply _alone_ for a long time now.

So the question arose as to what she should do with her new found alone time.

The first thing that sprung into her mind was coffee. She smiled.

Haru didn’t exactly understand why her intimate love of coffee existed, but she did know where it had originated. A long time ago, when her family had been alive (heaven forbid she remember it too clearly,) she had only been allowed to consume what her parents put in front of her, which was usually some foreign super-vegetable or bitterly-healthy, spiced tea that her parents had discovered on some mission. And usually Tanade ate sparingly, only when needed. When she had eaten a sweet or even just an apple that she came across in secret, her parents would somehow find out, punish her severely, and, in whatever way they could, attempt to get whatever it was she ate out of her system, lest it ruin the body they had so carefully constructed and maintained.

After her family was gone, and Haru no longer had anyone to tell her what and what not to eat, it _still_ frightened her to dine on anything that was unhealthy in any way possible, like candy, soda, pastries, and even most dairy. She had to force herself to eat such simple foods as apples, peaches, and bananas and even they left a funny taste in her mouth; she felt almost guilty to go against what once were her parents’ basic rules.

One day, Kakashi, after seeing her practically starve herself of what truly kept a ninja fit, decided that he needed to intervene and teach her how to indulge -- it was good for the soul, he claimed. He tried chocolate, but her stomach couldn’t keep it down. He tried soda, but she said it tasted funny and the carbonation gave her a headache. He tried a hundred things that any normal person would fall in love with before he gave up and just took her to a coffee shop so they could both read in peace -- he with a large mug of coffee, she with a bottle of water. Haru inquired about his drink -- it looked just like watery chocolate, why would he drink it? He offered that she try it, and it tasted like… well, coffee.

Her curiosity got the better of her, and she fell in love at first sip.

Since then, it had become Haru’s favorite thing to do in her free time to visit the Konoha coffee shop as often as possible, especially with Kakashi tagging along. On any day off, really, the coffee shop was where her friends would most likely find her.

Of course, it probably wasn’t healthy for her to drink coffee as much as she did, but she loved it too much -- as was the case with most of her unhealthy tendencies.

Her brow furrowed and her mouth twisted at the thought, as she entered the shop and ordered the largest cup of coffee she could, sitting down in the corner of the establishment facing toward the rest.

She seemed to have a lot of unhealthy tendencies, the more she considered it. Her addiction to coffee was unhealthy, but she loved the stuff too much to give it up. Her relationship with Kakashi was probably unhealthy by most standards (for they were teammates, colleagues, years apart in age, and had many differences and faults… not to mention he was an unabashed pervert, to put it bluntly,) but she simply loved him too much to let him go. Truly, her feelings for Uchiha Itachi were unhealthy, but she had been through way too much with him not to be in… well, not to care about him. Her ninja way, within itself, was unhealthy, but she was attached to it, melded in it, and had lived by it far too long.

But these tendencies were what made her who she was. Besides her guilty and not-so-guilty pleasures, there wasn’t much else for her to live for. A shinobi couldn’t keep going for king and country alone, and as much as she loved Konoha, she had to love the things and the people that made her who she was just as much, or she wasn’t sure she could go on.

She closed her eyes and took a deep swig of her coffee, not worried about how it burned her tongue and throat -- it felt good, and if it left any damage to her mouth, she had nothing to worry about. She took a deep breath, clearing her head on the exhale, and then smiled to herself on the next sip. There was no need to think so much right now.

She opened her eyes again and jumped as a familiar face loomed mere inches from her.

“Kakashi!” she gasped, relaxing upon seeing his eye crinkle in a smile. “You caught me off guard for once…”

Kakashi chuckled and sat down across from her at the table. “I didn’t expect to, but I’ll gladly take that as a compliment.”

Haru chuckled as well and sipped at her coffee again before mumbling, “How long did it take for everyone else to notice I’d gone?”

He shrugged, resting his elbows on the table. “I didn’t stick around long enough to find out.”

She raised a brow at him.

“I already knew you’d come here.”

She shook her head at him, smirking. “It would have been funny to watch them panic, though.”

“Mm,” he agreed and shook his head. “Is that good? It looks different from what you usually order.” He waved at the cup in her hand.

She nodded almost excitedly. “Mhmm. It has chocolate and raspberry syrup in it.”

“Hm. Sounds strange….” He crossed his arms.

“Try it. It tastes way better than it sounds,” she offered, holding the cup out to him. This was a normal scenario for them when they came here -- Haru would sometimes order a strange flavor, Kakashi would comment on it, and then she would push it on him. Normally, he loved it (except for the times when she added some foreign spice to it that she had acquired on a mission.)

Things were a little different this time, however. Kakashi wrapped his hand around the cup, as if to take it from her, but his hand also gripped Haru’s, which was still attached to her coffee. He didn’t let go of her hand while he raised the cup to his lips.

“That is really good,” he agreed, and put the cup back on the table -- without letting go. He looked up at her and smirked when he saw her blushing cheeks and bewildered expression. The sight was so typical of her to do that he almost laughed out loud, but settled for a light chuckle instead.

Haru blinked. “What’s so funny?”

Kakashi shook his head and moved their hands to rest on the table. He lifted his from hers but took advantage of her momentary surprise to drag his fingernails over the tops of her fingers.

A shiver raced up her spine, but it was so small that she was almost sure Kakashi hadn’t seen it -- and she truly hoped he hadn’t. She watched their fingers in slight fascination, but more surprise.

She was blushing even more fervently, and Kakashi just smiled at the simple cuteness of it. Kakashi raised an eyebrow at himself with the thought -- he had never thought of Haru as _cute_ before. Not since he had first met her who knows how many years ago, at least. He knew she was an alluringly pretty woman -- he had always known that -- but there were only so many things you could compliment her type of appearance with. Cute wasn’t one of them -- well, until she blushed, which he supposed was a new development.

“What are you thinking about?”

Kakashi looked up at her in surprise, his fingers pausing for a moment. “Hm?”

“Your expression keeps changing -- what are you thinking about?” Haru inquired simply, but quietly.

He smirked. “Just about how strange it is that we’ve known each other so long and yet I’ve only rarely seen you blush.”

Her skin reddened even more at this, and she looked out at the shop. He was giving her more to think about than she would have liked, and she struggled with a response. “Well… you know it always depends on the situation.”

He nodded, his eyes moving once more to their hands. “I think I should do this more often then,” he said, a smile evident in his voice.

She crinkled her nose at him, which only made him chuckle again, so she shook her head, rested it in her other hand, and simply watched his face as his fingernails continued to feather along her fingers.

She really could get used to moments like this. Despite all the crushing reality she had to ignore to have such a moment – her comatose state may have left her restless enough upon waking to incite her current behavior, but she couldn’t deny how purposefully she had to push everything aside in her mind in order to enjoy any of it. For now, at least, she wanted to focus on nothing more than the simple, more unhealthy pleasures she could. She could think about what she had just gone through later.

 And the look in Kakashi’s eyes told her he wanted the same.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was the beginning of the second arc of the story! I'm really excited to see what you all think of this arc (I'm actually almost about to start writing the third arc, which is crazy.)  
> Also I hope the flashbacks in this one aren't too confusing for any reason, but if they are there should be answers later on in the story. But thank you all so much for reading and sticking with me! I appreciate your comments and kudos and everything more than I can say.


	13. Unraveling

* * *

Sad, that happiness seemed so short-lived for shinobi.

Kakashi hated to bring it up in such a peaceful moment, but some things really needed to be discussed – especially when it came to such heinous organizations as Akatsuki. He looked tiredly at Haru’s calm face – one that he had known for more than ten years, through calm expressions and grief-filled, distorted ones – and decided to just get it over with.

“Haru,” he said, hesitation clear in his voice.

She looked up at him from where she leaned over the stream, hands cupped around the water she had been about to utilize. Registering the tone he used, she sighed and went ahead in tossing the water to her face and wiping it off with the front of her shirt. “Don’t worry about ruining the mood,” she said. “It couldn’t have lasted forever, anyways.”

He rested his elbows on his knees, his hands pulling up single blades of grass and ripping them apart, meditatively. “I know,” he said, watching his hands. “But it was a mood I was hoping didn’t have to end like this. If we don’t get it out of the way now, though, we never will.”

She nodded, and pulled her legs from beneath her to face Kakashi in a lotus position.

“Tsunade will want to speak with you after we leave here,” he began.

She could only assume the Hokage had told him that specifically. “Did she say why?” she asked.

Kakashi raised his brow at her but replied, “It would seem the Elders are now just as worried about your safety as she is.”

“What do you mean?”

“Danzou is saying that with the, uh, _demon_ , still inside you, Akatsuki is likely going to try to infiltrate Konoha to retrieve it,” he said slowly, as if he didn’t quite agree with the Elder’s assumption. “He thinks you should be kept in the Hokage Mansion or somewhere similarly fortified until the threat is over…”

Haru scoffed. “I’m sure that’s exactly what he wants,” she half-laughed, “to keep me holed up as close to him as possible. That would lessen the threat on both sides…”

“Why do you say that?” he asked, raising an eyebrow again.

She shook her head. “Danzou is intimidated by me,” she explained off-handedly. “Or, at least, by the power he thinks I hold over his head.”

“You mean the Five-Tails?”

She nodded hesitantly but said nothing more on the subject. She would have to speak with Tsunade, indeed. Danzou was right to believe she held a certain level of power over him, but she herself wasn’t the threat he should fear. Haru was only the harbinger, in more ways than one. And as long as he kept up his end of things, really he had nothing to worry about as far as she was concerned – although it was understandable why Akatsuki’s recent activity would render him more paranoid than usual.

Kakashi pulled her out of her thoughts again. “ _Is_ it still there?” he asked, gesturing to her abdomen nonchalantly, though she could see the concern in his features even through the mask.

“The seal, yes,” she replied, following his gaze. “But the Gobi… I’m not really sure.” Her brows furrowed as she placed a hand over the seal through her clothing. “He’s been silent… and hasn’t even stirred since the _extraction_.” She spoke the last word with a tone of sarcasm and bitterness.

“It’s not dead, though,” Kakashi started, watching her brow furrow further, “is it?”

“No,” she said. “There’s no way.” The hand on her abdomen tightened unconsciously. His chakra was still there, far beneath the surface, but it was much fainter than she remembered. She wondered if she was just imagining the difference. “I think… he’s in some sort of… coma, maybe. Or he’s been weakened.

“The real problem, I think,” she went on, “is whether or not he was half-sealed, or injured, or something of the sort… I only wish we had more information on this type of thing. …There was no lasting damage to me, so the extraction couldn’t have been more than fifty percent completed, but the Gobi isn’t awake anymore, so it had to have sealed _some_ of him. Or at least affected him in some way. There’s no way of knowing exactly how much without asking him… but even if he were awake, I wouldn’t exactly want to have to interrogate him.”

It was Kakashi’s turn to furrow his brows. “I understand,” he said thoughtfully. “Does knowing the details really matter, though? In the grand scheme of things?”

She lifted her eyebrows, eyes momentarily closing as she sighed. “I suppose not…” She looked into his eyes carefully, as if reading into what he was thinking to say next. “But it would be relieving to know,” she said, distracted.

He sighed, deciding to go on casually. “You know we really pissed them off.”

She laughed at the contradiction of simplicity within that statement, though it was short-lived before she dropped her gaze bitterly. “Yeah, I know it,” she said, quieter. “After all, this is the second time I’ve escaped them. That’s not something they’re accustomed to.”

“Well, at least this time you hadn’t walked in _and_ out of their clutches willingly,” he said. “That should leave them with their ego intact more so than the last time.”

A sharp chuckle escaped her. “Maybe.” She shook her head, and a moment passed quickly as they both continued to mull over the situation. “…It feels like it was decades ago, doesn’t it – since that mission, I mean?”

He nodded, eyes narrowing slightly. It hadn’t been a pleasant time for him, either. When she’d left, he hadn’t been sure she’d ever be able to come back to Konoha.

She sighed, melancholy and reminiscent. “I think we would have been much better off if I had never accepted that mission.” She seemed to be talking more to herself after that. “What was I thinking…?”

“Haru,” he said pointedly. “You know you shouldn’t regret anything, not about that -- remember what Jiraiya used to say?”

She sighed. “I know. But after all these years of doing exactly that, of… _regretting_ … it’s difficult to suddenly, well… not.”

Kakashi sighed and looked down at his lap. One of the things he had learned about Haru early on was that mistakes and regrets made up a large part of the way she thought. It was a complex of hers, really – as understandable as it was, considering what her childhood had been like. All the same, he wished he could help her.

“Anyways,” he said suddenly, turning his gaze back to her. “What are we going to do when Akatsuki comes back for you?”

“Well, they wouldn’t come directly to Konoha,” she said, watching the stream beside her with a disbanded interest. “They’d wait until I was on a mission, or -- wait, what do you mean, ‘we’?”

He raised a brow at her, his gaze firm. “I mean the two of us, Haru, and everyone else here willing to protect you.”

She groaned, running a hand through her hair.

“Oh, c’mon, now, Haru,” he said, suppressing a smirk. “We’re shinobi. We risk our lives for each other every day. Why is this any different?”

“Because, Kakashi, it’s Akatsuki!” she snapped. “Things are always different when it comes to them.”

His brows stitched together, the suppressed smirk replaced with a small frown. “What do you mean?”

“Their motives are constantly changing!” she said. “I mean, of course it’s for this big master goal in the end, but their strategy within that goal changes with every little hitch -- one target randomly changes direction and suddenly they’ve made an entirely new plan! You can’t predict them besides the obvious limitations -- but Kami, who knows when Itachi and Kisame will decide to pay us a visit again, or when Deidara will decide to blow up another village?” She took a shaky breath. “Or… or who knows when another tragedy like Asuma, or Anko --”

“Okay, Haru,” Kakashi said, shell-shocked from her last declaration; he grabbed hold of her hands and squeezed them in an attempt to wake her up from her rant. She looked up at his eyes with a strange sort of shock. “I get it. But no matter what, even when we _are_ dealing with Akatsuki, I will never be anywhere but right beside you. All of us will be there. …We’re not letting them take you again.” He let out a small sigh. “That was too much.”

And suddenly her face was buried in his shoulder, her arms around his neck. Kakashi froze in surprise, but slowly his hands found their way to her back.

She groaned into his shoulder, and he could tell by the way her shoulders shook that she was trying to stifle sobs. “I’m sorry.”

Kakashi shook his head. It was one thing to be reminded about Asuma and Anko, but something else entirely for Haru to be nearly crying.

They sat there for several moments as she regained her composure and Kakashi leaned his tired head atop hers. “It’s alright,” he said in an attempt to comfort her. “…You need to stop thinking about everything that’s happened…. We have to keep moving forward.”

Haru pulled away slowly. “I don’t really have a choice either way,” she said, low and half-bitter. “We’re shinobi. We don’t have time for emotions.”

His mouth twisted but he found himself nodding in agreement, as sad as it was to hear the truth.

“I remember someone telling me, a long time ago,” she started, dropping her arms into her lap before he did the same, “that shinobi are horrible things.”

He watched her carefully.

She looked up at the sky and squinted against the afternoon sun. “They slaughter, and massacre, and murder, and destroy… but that usually it’s for good intentions. …He said that ninjas were born to protect the things they love, the things they grow up smiling and laughing for. They throw away emotion because there is never time for it, and when their career is over -- if by some small chance they weren’t K. I. A. -- they will finally be able to laugh and smile again. He said that it is a terrible, distorted, and mangled way to live, but now that shinobi exist, someone has to keep protecting and loving and fighting for everything. Someone has to keep destroying themselves for others. Now that the cycle has started, it will never stop, and it is something ninjas know, but never have time to truly realize or regret, or hate or mourn. That there’s never enough time.

“The only thing that I have ever disagreed about with him is what he said about time,” she said, turning her face back towards the stream. “I don’t know why he said that there is none, when you’re a ninja, because even he once lived lazily, and always with a smile -- always acting like he had all the time in the world. Of course he didn’t stay that way. But… shinobi have more time than we give ourselves credit for. We were just taught not to waste it, because every second of our lives could be our last.

“But I refuse to live constantly thinking that I’m going to die tomorrow. It’s unhealthy, especially for someone who already has too many unhealthy tendencies in her life. …I think I’m done adding to the list,” she said, watching the stream with a frown.

After a long moment, Kakashi chuckled. “You do realize that I’ve been telling you that for years now, right?”

She looked at him out of the corner of her eye. “…Really?”

“Yes.” He laughed.

Another groan escaped her and she closed her eyes, but she smiled at his laughter nevertheless. “Well, you should be glad it finally sunk in, then.”

He chuckled one last time and stood to stretch.

After a few long moments, she furrowed her brow again. “You know… I’m starting to think that they let me go far too easily.”

He stared at her.

“The leader only sent Itachi after me, right? When you fled? Why didn’t they put up more of a fight?”

“You’re right,” he said, surprised. Haru stood up with him. “But no jinchuuriki has ever escaped in the middle of their ritual before this. Maybe they were caught off guard.”

“No,” she said. “There is no catching them off guard. But there’s also no way they planned that.”

“Well, then, it obviously didn’t cause them any disadvantage. Maybe their outlook is ‘We’ll get her soon enough, meanwhile there’s other jinchuuriki to catch.’” He continued to stare at her.

“Maybe…” she said and blinked. The duo began walking back towards town. “But if so, then there is no way Tsunade will let me go on any missions from here on out without at _least_ a full protective cell.”

He nodded in agreement, a sense of powerful protectiveness washing over him. Unconsciously, he moved closer to her as they walked.

“This is going to really suck,” she said with finality.

He chuckled again, and after a short moment of considering her, clapped a hand on her back. She startled, but he spoke before she could question the sudden show of camaraderie. “By the way,” he said, “happy belated birthday, Haru.”

She stared at him, eyes wide, as his one visible eye crinkled in a smile. _Oh… I suppose it has been that long,_ she thought. It was the middle of February now, which meant her birthday had passed weeks ago, while she’d been in the hospital. “…Thank you,” she said distantly.

“It’s probably pretty disorienting,” Kakashi said, his hand sliding away from her shoulder. He’d expected her surprise but could only hope she wasn’t too sad she’d missed her own special day. “But hey, least you’re not turning 30 anytime soon.”

She chuckled at his quip, seeming to break out of the disorientation. “I certainly don’t feel 22,” she replied, then turned her head away from him with a mischievous look in her eyes, “but you’re right, at least I’m not an old man like you.”

“Hey…!” he complained, but she was already laughing at him so any further complaint died on his lips. He was happy just to hear that laugh, and soon enough he was laughing with her.

They left the training field, backs to the sun.

* * *

 


	14. Pursuit

* * *

The sun had long since disappeared behind the horizon, but the night was still warm.

   Winters never lasted long in the Land of Fire, much to Haru’s pleasure. As disorienting as it was to miss a month of her life in a coma, she couldn’t complain about skipping over the coldest month of the year. Her night watches were so much easier to get through when she wasn’t tense and shivering from the cold.

   Tonight, however, she wasn’t the only ANBU watching the darkened streets of Konoha. Tsunade had ensured that after Haru’s near-capture she wouldn’t do anything as a shinobi without proper protection – at least until Akatsuki was no longer a threat, which Haru knew wouldn’t happen until one or both of them were destroyed. And as much as she couldn’t argue with the Hokage’s logic (she’d seen it coming, after all,) she couldn’t help but feel a tad annoyed at her sudden excess of company. Tonight her neighbor Ashikaru joined her on her watch, albeit on opposite sides of the village, which in this case wasn’t too aggravating – but she’d already gone on one A-rank mission since her coma that had been a near disaster for how many shinobi had been ordered to accompany her. Even having _one_ more shinobi than needed on a mission could cause trouble, as it usually made a team much more detectable and increased the likelihood of mistakes. She’d had three extra teammates.

   She sighed quietly to herself, leaping three roofs over for a change of view. She knew that eventually Tsunade would ease up her guard but at this point Haru wasn’t sure which was worse: the threat of Akatsuki coming after her again out on the field, or failing a mission and likely getting her fellow ANBU killed because of a swollen cell. At least in dealing with the Akatsuki threat, stealth was usually on her side. There was no stealth in numbers, and Haru believed only stealth would win out over strength when it came to Akatsuki. She highly doubted that the next time they found her it would only be Itachi (and maybe Kisame,) or that they would risk letting her teammates live again. The next time they found her she knew she wouldn’t come out alive.

   _And I thought it’d been hopeless last time…_ she thought. The more she reflected on what had happened the more the whole situation just seemed like a fluke – on both sides. She couldn’t understand how Team Kakashi had managed to rescue her, or why Itachi was the only Akatsuki that pursued them, or how Itachi had failed to stop them at all. By all logic, she shouldn’t have survived – her simple mistakes had ensured death – and yet...

   Her had fluttered to her abdomen. The seal burned into her skin beneath her uniform was still there, black as ever and unchanged, right beneath her ribs. She could still feel the five-tailed demon within, but the chakra she was so used to bubbling right beneath the surface felt… distant. She had no idea what it meant. Perhaps Akatsuki really had succeeded partly, or perhaps somehow their ritual had injured the demon. It was possible that she might be able to find out using her kekkei genkai, but, if she were being honest with herself, she almost didn’t want to find out – and she was fairly sure that if Rakumaru was injured, she wouldn’t be too inclined to heal him. So she hadn’t checked. But the thoughts were nagging, and she knew that the responsible thing to do would be to find out as much as she could; after all, the Gobi wasn’t just a danger to her. He was as much Konoha’s problem as hers.

   She shook her head. She needed to focus on her watch, as boring as her watches always turned out to be. There was no use in asking questions that she had no way of answering, or in trying to make decisions that she simply wasn’t ready for.

   She heard him coming before he appeared beside her, faint steps on a rooftop and controlled breathing. Ashikaru now perched on the roof at her side, looking off in the direction she assumed he’d come from.

   “I saw something moving over the wall,” he said quickly through his ANBU mask, which resembled the face of a mouse. “There’s blood. We need to investigate.”

   Haru merely nodded, and they took off towards the wall together. It’d been a long time since anything nearly as interesting had happened on one of her watches – the last time it had been a missing nin whose brain had been muddled by a genjutsu, just wandering the streets of Konoha after dark and waving a katana at shadows. The blood that Ashikaru mentioned worried her, though. It could mean any number of things, but none of them looked good.

   When they arrived at the base of the tall wall that stretched around Konoha, she motioned for him to climb first. He perched atop the wall and looked out in the direction he’d saw the thing moving, and while he searched Haru investigated the blood. It was splattered on the ground right at the wall’s base, and she spotted a smaller splatter near the top, smeared in what seemed to be a handprint. The blood on the ground was hard to read in the darkness, but there wasn’t a lot – it was a small wound, at least. She pulled a small vial from her pouch and took a sample of it, hoping the fact that it was mixed with dirt wouldn’t hinder an analysis.

   She heard Ashikaru’s signal and quickly joined him where he was perched, noting on her way up that the second blood splatter was definitely a handprint, large enough to be a man’s. Ashikaru nodded towards the forest.

   “Whoever it is, they haven’t gone far,” he muttered. “I can feel a chakra signature out there but I can’t pinpoint it.”

   “You want to get closer?” she suggested, scanning the forest herself.

   “It’s not a good idea,” he replied. “We’ll have to send out a search in the morning.”

   She frowned. “They’re likely injured,” she said, pointing back at the bloodstains. “What if it’s one of ours?”

   “Why would they run _out_ of Konoha if they’re Leaf?” She could feel his chakra pulse as he tried to feel for the chakra signature again. He shook his head. “I don’t know who or where they are, but if they were friendly they would have wanted a Leaf nin to find them. They’re trying very hard _not_ to be found… yet they’re still out there, I can feel it.”

   “Then we _need_ to get closer,” she argued. “They were here for a reason – that could be a problem.”

   “You and I can’t risk it,” he said with finality. “All we can do is send out a search party in the morning.”

   She sighed angrily and leapt off the wall back into the heart of Konoha. She knew exactly why he couldn’t let them just pursue the person themselves but the logic behind it didn’t piss her off any less.

   Ashikaru followed and caught up to her quickly. “What are you doing?”

   “I’m calling a search party now,” she said. “We can’t afford to wait until morning.”

   “The Captain’s asleep.”

   “And this could be important,” she snapped. “I know Tsunade would have your head if you let me pursue this mystery man while Akatsuki is still out there, but I’m not going to let them get in the way of my job any more than they already have. I don’t care who I have to wake up.”

   She heard Ashikaru sigh but he kept his mouth shut. He knew better than to argue when she pushed – he’d been on enough missions with her in the past to know what this behavior meant, and nine times out of ten when she pushed like this, they got results.

   She had no idea if this lead was in any way important or dangerous, but she had a feeling. Something was off about the blood, and she was eager to get it analyzed – until then, however, they couldn’t let this chakra signature get away, especially when it didn’t seem to be moving.

   In the back of her head, however, she really did hope it was nothing.

* * *

 

“Excuse me?”

   The medic in the lab turned around, eyes wide as if she hadn’t expected anyone else in the vicinity. Haru supposed there weren’t many civilians who would come to this floor of the hospital.

   “Oh, you’re Tanade-san, aren’t you?” asked the medic.

   Haru paused. “…Um, yes, I am,” she replied.

   “My apologies,” the medic said hastily, “I just noticed your clothing, and I feel like I’ve seen your face around here a few times. I’m Himura Itsume.”

   “Ah. I do work a lot here in my off-seasons – I imagine most of the medics have seen me around,” Haru replied, looking down at her clothes subconsciously – she was still wearing her black ANBU uniform, just without the white armor. She’d understandably been in a rush after her night watch ended.

   Itsume nodded absent-mindedly, then eyed the vial in Haru’s hand. “What brings you down here, Tanade-san?”

   “I was hoping you could analyze this sample for me,” said Haru, walking forward into the lab before handing over the vial. “I came across it on a mission – it should just be blood and dirt but if there’s anything else you can find out about it, I’d be grateful.”

   “Sure,” Itsume said, and set to work immediately.

   With the machines the hospital provided it didn’t take long, but even with the short wait Haru found herself getting antsy. The whole night had had her on edge – although the fact that she hadn’t slept in over a day probably had something to do with it.

   “Hmm,” Itsume mumbled, her eyes in the microscope. “Omitting any compounds from the dirt you mentioned, it looks like AB-type blood and saliva… but there’s something else…”

   Haru’s brow furrowed. A mouth injury, then? Or an internal injury to the respiratory system? “Something else…?” she repeated.

   Itsume frowned, adjusting the dials carefully. “It’s an organic compound, like some kind of virus or parasite… or perhaps just a kind of sap, something that comes from a plant? Its cellular structure is odd. It’s hard to tell but…” She pulled away from the microscope and rested her hands on her hips. “…But I think I’ve seen it before.”

   “What do you mean?” Perhaps the man was sick or poisoned… or not entirely human? Her mind wandered to a certain plant-like shinobi she’d seen with Akatsuki – one of the few members she’d never met.

   “I’ve had shinobi bring me samples that contained this compound before – very rarely, mind you,” Itsume explained, “but still enough to recognize it when I see it. It’s unique. Unfortunately I don’t know anything about it. I’d need a much larger sample even to study it.”

   “Hmm.” Haru glanced towards the microscope. From the little she’d heard about the plant Akatsuki, Zetsu, the pieces didn’t add up – just the way he traveled wouldn’t have left room for climbing walls and making handprints. And the blood was mixed with saliva, meaning one way or another it had to come from the man’s mouth – the splash pattern she remembered could have been from coughing or spitting. But somehow none of it answered any questions.

   “You’re looking for someone right?” Itsume asked, breaking Haru’s pregnant silence. “Are they dangerous?”

   Haru glanced back at the medic. “I’m not sure… but it doesn’t seem too worrisome, I don’t think,” she half-lied. Regardless of Itsume’s findings, Haru wouldn’t know anything until the search party they’d sent returned.

   Itsume seemed to see through her, but said, “I’m sure you’ll find them, anyways, Tanade-san.”

   Haru took her vial and put it back in her pouch. “Thank you for your help, Himura-san,” she said, and headed for the door. “I don’t want to keep you from your work.”

   “Of course,” she replied. “If you find any more of that sample, I’d be glad to see if I could learn any more about the compound.”

   Haru waved over her shoulder in acknowledgment as she left the lab, her mind swimming too deep to find a better response.

   It was still entirely possible that this lead could be nothing. As strange and nearly suspicious as the situation seemed, there could just as easily have been a more mundane explanation for it all as an insidious one. Maybe a Leaf shinobi was sick and had a nosebleed as they were leaving for a mission – something like that.

   But Haru knew as she made her way back to her apartment, somehow, that there was something she was missing – there was something more to it. She only hoped her lack of sleep was making her overthink it.

   Ashikaru was walking out of his apartment as she neared hers. She waved to get his attention.

   “Still up, Chiharu?” he called. “I thought you’d gone to bed already.”

   She shook her head as she stopped next to him. They’d been on watch until just before dawn, and she could tell he’d just woken up from his nap – he usually slept in until late morning after his watches. “I had to finish up some work,” she said, then lowered her voice. “Have you heard anything about the search party?”

   “No,” he said, the look on his face telling her he’d been enjoying the levity that came with just not thinking about it. “I imagine our guest is long gone by now.”

   Haru frowned. “Maybe. They’ve been gone for seven hours now, though.”

   “Takes a while to search an entire forest,” said Ashikaru, then waved as he started to head off to wherever he was going. “You worry too much, Chiharu.”

   Haru sighed and waved at his back. _I’m sure I do,_ she thought. She was long due for a nap – and maybe when she woke up things would go back to making sense. She entered her apartment and headed immediately for her bedroom where she stripped off the rest of her pouches and ANBU attire and hid them away in her closet.

   At the very least she knew a nap would help her to just stop thinking altogether. Kakashi was out on a mission, so she didn’t have him around to keep her distracted from all the things that had been floating around in her head lately. As much as last night’s watch had succeeded in keeping her from thinking about Akatsuki and its members after a while, it also just gave her more to worry about. And it didn’t end there, it seemed.

   There was a distinct tapping at her bedroom window. She froze in the middle of tying her sweatpants – _that sound._ She knew that sound. She turned around slowly.

   On her windowsill, its beak poised carefully at the glass, sat a large black crow.

   Its eyes were scarlet red.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And this, my dear readers, is where my favorite part of the story begins :) Hope you're all enjoying it as much as I enjoy writing it! Thank you so much for reading and commenting, as always.


	15. What Comes Around

_In the four years since he’d been promoted to jounin and then joined ANBU shortly after, he’d never been assigned such an odd mission._

_Kakashi stood just outside the gates to Konoha, awaiting his newly assigned team with an unbridled apprehension. The mission itself wasn’t so odd – it was a fairly standard rescue mission paid for, in excess, by two Kirigakure aristocrats whose daughter had been kidnapped by a local bandit clan. He knew a couple of the teammates he’d been assigned for the mission and doubted they’d have any problems completing it. The fourth member of their cell, however, had him questioning the sanity of the aging Sandaime Hokage._

_Before he had time to work himself up about it, though, his team began to file out from within Konoha’s walls, the first of which was Yuhi Kurenai._

_“Yo,” he greeted, hands in his pockets, as she approached._

_She nodded her own greeting. “You’re not usually the first one here,” she commented. “Or am I late?”_

_“I am indeed early,” Kakashi sighed. Perhaps he should have brought a book with him to avoid the awkward scrutiny he knew Kurenai best for. “I was hoping the rest of you would be early, too.”_

_“Hm.” She glanced back through the gates, watching their third teammate approach from far down the street, then turned back to her team leader. “You’re not nervous, are you?”_

_He scratched the back of his head, beginning to feel exasperated. “Well, I don’t want to drag this mission out,” he replied, “that’s for sure.”_

_“…I’m a bit nervous, too,” she agreed stoically. “But I’ve been on a mission with her before. You’d be surprised.”_

_“Surprised how?” asked Kakashi hesitantly._

_Kurenai didn’t get a chance to answer as Niki Ashikaru walked up to them with a loud, “Hey!”_

_“Glad you’re early,” Kakashi commented in lieu of a greeting._

_“I usually am,” the fifteen-year-old laughed. He was a jounin like Kakashi but only as of recently, while Kurenai was older than both of them but was still a chuunin. They were all equally as experienced as the next when it came to these kinds of missions, though, and while Kakashi had only done a few with either of them before, he knew he could trust that experience, and could trust that their teamwork would be solid. As for their last teammate…_

_Kakashi sighed quietly, partly in the hopes that the fresh air in his lungs would help with the growing anxiety he felt._

_Suddenly Ashikaru’s eyes flitted off to Kakashi’s side. “Oh, there you are!” he said. “You’re usually always here before me – I was getting worried!”_

_Kakashi turned around._

   _“I was held back,” said Tanade Chiharu. “You know how they are…”_

_At nine years old, she stood a good head shorter than the three of them, but she didn’t look as childlike as he’d been expecting. Her cheeks were still round with youth and her frame small, but there was a maturity in her eyes that was, frankly, unsettling. He’d only heard fragments of stories about her missions as a chuunin, and while what little he’d heard combined with the maturity she seemed to exude was impressive, still her age was what had him on edge._

_He himself became chuunin when he was six years old, but he knew what had driven him to grow up so fast – even if this Chiharu had gone through a similar early coming of age (and he knew she hadn’t, given that she still had parents, unlike him,) he couldn’t count on how prepared she really was to take on an A-rank mission usually given to shinobi like him and the rest of their team. He knew he should trust the Sandaime’s judgment, but until he saw her abilities and her teamwork for himself, he knew his apprehension wouldn’t diminish._

_He realized as he surfaced from his thoughts that Chiharu was staring at him, as if waiting for him to speak. He looked to their other teammates but luckily they were in a conversation he’d missed the start of, so he cleared his throat and rested his hands on his hips, avoiding the young girl’s stare. “Alright, we should get moving,” he said. “We won’t be able to set up camp and rest when we get to Kiri so we’ll have to go easy getting there. We’ll walk halfway and then speed up the rest of the way – the closer we get the more we run the risk of the bandits knowing we’re there. We’ll have to be careful in that regard…”_

_His team listened with rapt attention as he finished briefing them on the details of the mission, and as soon as he finished they headed out for the Hidden Mist village. It took them until sundown to reach their checkpoint a mile away from the bandit clan’s building, where they fleshed out their plan for infiltration. The only way Kakashi could see the mission going, they wouldn’t be able to rely on stealth alone to reach their clients’ daughter, and without knowing the layout of the building they’d have to spread out a bit if they wanted to get in and out quickly. He gave each of them earpieces to communicate when they reached their target, and then split them into two teams. Kurenai, who excelled in genjutsu, and Ashikaru, whose strength was taijutsu and earth-style jutsus, would enter from the south side, and work together to get through the multitudes of bandits without alerting the whole clan. Kakashi was left with Chiharu, knowing his hands-on style would match better with her more evasive, stealthy one in getting them through the bandits on the north side of the building._

_He turned to her as Kurenai and Ashikaru took their position on the opposite side of the building. “I’ll need you to take point,” he whispered. “You’re smaller and quieter than me so they’re less likely to notice you. But I’ll be right behind you, so don’t worry.”_

_She narrowed her eyes at him. “That’s no good.”_

_“Look, it’ll be better with you in front—“_

_“No,” she whispered, “I mean that if you’re right behind me they’ll spot us in a heartbeat. You should keep your distance, and I can wave you up when I’ve found or cleared out a good route.”_

_He considered her for a moment, unsure if he could trust her judgment, but their window to enter the building was closing fast – soon the guards outside would round the corner on their patrol – so he nodded his consent and nudged her forward._

_She sent back a disapproving look at the contact but leapt through the open window into the building. After a couple seconds, her hand came into view over the window sill, waving him inside._

_He had to step over an unconscious bandit immediately as he entered, but before he could even wonder how she’d taken him out so quickly, she was signaling him forward down the hall, her face expressionless. His brow furrowed. She was already moving too quickly. Surely she wasn’t scouting as thoroughly as he needed her to._

_He kept his distance behind her, letting her go around corners first and check inside every door they passed, all the while listening for any bandits he knew she must have missed. But with every wave of her hand, he seemed to step over another unconscious enemy on his way to her position. He never even saw her take them out. The apprehension in his gut only grew – he had a bad feeling about having her so far ahead of him._

_The next time she waved him up from around a corner, he appeared next to her instead of matching her speed. She shot him an alarmed look but kept silent out of necessity. He seemed confused at the color of her eyes but she could tell it didn’t register with him, or perhaps he didn’t actually know anything about the Tanade clan. She could sense chakra in the nearest room to her left, and only hoped he couldn’t sense theirs. Silently she moved towards the door, but with Kakashi right at her heel she knew she wouldn’t get in without being spotted._

_She reached behind her and placed a hand on his chest, giving him a pointed look to move back, but he only frowned at her. What was he doing? If she didn’t do this quickly and silently the bandits around the corner up ahead would surely—_

_Suddenly Kakashi was opening the door and there was nothing she could do to reverse the damage. She heard several kunai pierce the wood and her cover of silence was lost. She’d have to let Kakashi take out the one in the room – the two bandits around the corner had heard and were just about to enter her hallway. She leapt up to the corner and as soon as they were within arms’ length she reached through the first one, stalling his heart like her mother had shown her, and moved immediately behind the second one and reached – but there was no contact – he’d spun with a knife in hand and she had to leap back to dodge it. In an instant she was behind him once more and was able to knock him out but she realized as soon as he dropped that he’d shouted before she reached him, and now there were two more chakra signatures heading her way, back from where she could feel Kakashi’s._

_She ran around the corner just as her team leader landed a blow to the back of his opponent’s head, and as she reached him he was distracted enough in seeing her running towards him that he didn’t notice the two bandits that had just appeared behind him. In a split second decision she changed direction and tackled Kakashi into the room he’d just left just as a fuuma shuuriken went flying past the doorway. “Stay down!” she hissed and leapt towards the doorway as the first bandit appeared in it, but Kakashi didn’t heed her._

_If she kept flinging herself at these bandits, he thought, she was going to get herself killed. He leapt up to join the fight, landing a hit on the bandit’s torso just as he seemed to be pulling her by the arm into him. Chiharu gasped, he initially thought from surprise, but when the bandit started groaning loudly in pain Kakashi glanced down. The man’s back was bent at an impossible angle, his ribs no longer matching up with his hips, and he began to cough up blood. Confused, Kakashi scanned the man’s body, trying to figure out what had just happened, but then a sharp pain pierced his side and he felt a hand on his shoulder pulling him further into the kunai at his ribs. Chiharu moved in a flash, leaping over their heads to land behind the bandit at his back and Kakashi felt the hand and kunai leave him. He spun around, pulling his own kunai from his pouch, aiming for where he calculated the bandit’s neck would be but instead was met with a hand at his wrist._

_Chiharu was looking up at him with wide eyes, the bandit unconscious on the ground between them. Quickly she pushed Kakashi to the side by the wrist she held and went to the other bandit, who was still coughing and groaning loudly in agony. As soon as she reached him he was silenced but this time Kakashi watched her do it – watched as her hand passed through the bandit’s chest like he were made of water, quickly quieting as her hand retreated. She looked back up at him and suddenly her eyes made sense, though he had no idea what exactly it all meant. She pushed him to the wall and stood stock-still, and with a start he remembered to listen for any more movement around them just as she was doing. Miraculously all was quiet again, and Chiharu took her hand off of him and leaned back to meet his eyes._

_“What were you thinking?!” she hissed. “You told me to take point!”_

_He matched her gaze with furrowed brow. “You were moving too quickly, I had to be sure you weren’t—“_

_“Did you not do any research on your teammates before this mission?!” she interrupted in an angry whisper. She pointed to her eyes. “You don’t know what this is?”_

_“I think I get the gist now,” he hissed back, then winced at the pain in his side. So this was how it felt to be subordinated by a nine-year-old, he thought._

_She took a steadying breath, watching him as he put a hand over his wound to quell the bleeding. “We’re on the same team,” she whispered tightly, pushing his hand away to replace it with her own, “and you made a strategy for us. Our teamwork was fine until you messed it up because you didn’t trust my abilities and you didn’t bother to learn anything about me before we got here. But we’ve got to work together here or we’ll fail.” She pulled her hand away, his wound now healed._

_He looked down at the hole in his vest in wonder – she hadn’t used any chakra to heal him. She just healed it. He look back at her eyes, grey where they had been green when he’d first met her, two thin, dark circles overlapping over each of her pupils. “…Alright,” he whispered back tensely. “Same strategy.”_

_She gave him a look._

_“…I trust you,” he said._

_The admission seemed enough for her as she nodded. “We’re getting close,” she whispered. “There have been more of these guys along this way and I think they’re guarding her.”_

_They continued through the hallways as they’d done before, with Chiharu silently taking out enemies as she came across them, in increasing frequency as she’d predicted. After several minutes of this, Kurenai’s voice sounded through their earpieces that they’d found a way out if Kakashi could retrieve their target. After several more minutes, he and Chiharu did just that – the girl was knocked out behind a heavily guarded door that Chiharu took care of in a matter of seconds, the bandits never knowing what had hit them._

_When they’d met back up with Kurenai and Ashikaru, having used their exit and reached their checkpoint a few miles in the direction of Kirigakure, Kakashi had their teammates go ahead to Kiri to finish the contract while he and Chiharu held their position to make sure they weren’t followed. After a few moments of listening to the light rain on the trees above them, Chiharu turned to him._

_“You really had no idea I had a kekkei genkai?” she asked quietly._

_He sighed. He’d known it was coming. “You were right that I should have done my research,” he admitted, “but it turned out okay in the end, so what does it matter?”_

_She shook her head. “I just meant—“ She paused. In her hesitation he could finally see the shyness he’d expected to come with her age. “Well. Your best friend was an Uchiha, so I thought...”_

_He frowned and looked away from her._

_“My clan is very close with them,” she explained. “Usually when people know about the Uchiha and the Sharingan, they know about us and our kekkei genkai, too.”_

_“We didn’t talk much,” said Kakashi shortly. “Then we were friends. And then he was K.I.A.”_

_She looked down at the ground as her face turned red. “Sorry,” she said, even quieter than before. “I never met Obito. But I heard he was very determined. And kind. …And very brave.”_

_Kakashi nodded. The rain was getting lighter overhead, but he could still hear droplets hitting the leaves above and around them. “…He taught me that teamwork is the most important thing as a shinobi,” he muttered after a moment. He looked at her again, meeting her solemn gaze. “…You reminded me of him a little. Back there.”_

_“I’m sorry about that, too,” she said quickly. “I wouldn’t normally have let anger get the best of me. I should have—“_

_“Don’t be,” he interrupted. “You were right. …I’d forgotten what Obito taught me. I made an assumption about you that clouded my judgment. This mission would have been a lot messier without you.”_

_Chiharu watched his one visible eye, a light blush still on her cheeks. It was strange to hear such an admission from him – from anyone, really. She opened her mouth to respond—_

_“You both apologize too much! Oh, man.”_

_They looked up from where they sat amongst the bushes. Ashikaru was smiling as he and Kurenai walked up to the checkpoint. The four of them reconvened quickly and began the journey back to Konoha._

_“So are you two friends now?” Kakashi heard Ashikaru ask moments later, a short distance behind him._

_“Uh, I – I don’t—“ he heard Chiharu stutter. He smirked as she fished around for an answer, but chose not to weigh in on their conversation._

_She’d figure it out eventually._

* * *

 

As soon as the light left the sky that evening Haru left for the forest, taking the longer route through Konoha via the back roads and alleyways. She didn’t know when she’d be back, so she’d gone to take her name off the night-watch list as soon as the crow had left her window – she hoped it looked more like she needed a break after the events of her last watch, and not as if there was anything more suspicious going on. At least Kakashi was still out on his mission. She doubted anyone else would try to visit her after dark. Hopefully this meant that nobody would even know she’d left.

   The second she was out of sight, outside the walls of Konoha that she’d climbed at their least-monitored point, she broke into a sprint. She couldn’t waste any time: she had to try to get back before sunrise, or else run the risk of word reaching Tsunade that she’d left Konoha by herself in the middle of the night. She had no idea what he even needed to see her for to have risked asking her to come at all – meaning she had no idea how long she’d be away.

   Her shoulders were tight with anxiety at the thought of what she was doing… but she had to trust him. He wouldn’t lead her into another trap, not like this. The crow was an implicit messenger – it was his promise as much as it was his request. As dangerous as it was for her to be outside the walls of the village on her own, he would never summon her without first ensuring the safety of their meeting. The crow, and what it meant, were a constant. Even after she thought he’d betrayed her, had he sent for her like this she wouldn’t have thought twice about answering his summons (although many a time she’d hoped he would do just so she would have an opportunity to slap him across the face.)

   But this was the first time she’d seen that crow in over two years – since she’d infiltrated Akatsuki and was forced to escape because of him. She had thought he’d changed, that he had turned her in to their leader out of selfishness and betrayal and not because he’d had no other choice, and because of that she’d spent two years hating him, thinking that his being Akatsuki had finally gone to his head. And he hadn’t tried to contact her, not to apologize or explain or anything of the sort, until her team’s ambush on Kabuto’s envoy.

   Perhaps she should have been angry at him for the silence. But all of it was merely proof of how difficult it was to communicate when they had to be so secretive around other shinobi. How easy it was to misinterpret their own coded messages. How dangerous it was to even stay connected with one another.

   After an hour of leaping through the trees of the forest, her route began to look more familiar. It was more overgrown than she remembered, but it had been years, after all. This was where they used to come for such meetings before the mission that had ceased their communication. With almost the entire ninja world under the belief that he was an evil, irredeemable missing-nin, meeting out here when nobody would be looking for them was the only way they’d been able to communicate at all. For any Leaf nin or well-connected missing nin, finding the two of them in such a friendly atmosphere would cause problems they couldn’t even imagine, and raise questions neither of them would be able to answer without endangering innocent people.

   But Itachi always made sure that the risk of their meetings was well worth it. They needed each other, after all.

   There was a small building in the middle of the woods within the Land of Fire, far outside of Konoha’s walls, no bigger than her bedroom and kitchen put together, shielded by a genjutsu that allowed only those who knew the right seals to walk within its perimeter. In the dark it was impossible to find without knowing its exact location already. With four quick seals, the small abode came into Haru’s view in the center of a clearing that had previously appeared to be just another grouping of trees.

   She walked up to it slowly, realizing with each step that she wasn’t even sure how to greet him. After two years of believing he had betrayed her, that his feelings and his personality had changed for the worse, her emotions were no longer sure how to react to the thought of him. He hadn’t exactly made it easy for her. But as little as he had been able to explain once she’d been captured, she still knew how to read in between the lines. She’d known him for as long as she could remember, and she understood, at least in a basic sense, what his motives had been and had always been.

   That would have to be enough for her. There was little time to waste. She opened the door despite her nervousness.

   Itachi sat in an old wooden chair facing the small fire, leaned forward with his elbows on his knees, his cloak draped over the back of the chair. His hair, still tied low at his neck as it always was, was draped over his shoulder, the ends of the black strands reaching the bottom of his chest now. His long bangs blocked his eyes from her view. She entered and shut the door behind her, removing her shoes where he had left his own next to the door frame.

   When she straightened back up, he was already standing and facing her. His eyes were red with the Sharingan.

   “Before anything else,” he said quietly, “you should know where I… _we…_ stand.”

   Her heart was pounding in her chest. It took all of her willpower to breathe steadily and remain where she stood. “I know you had no choice,” she said, matching his low tone. “Please, Itachi… I don’t want to hear you apologize. For anything.”

   “…That’s a bold admission from someone who deserves no less than that,” he muttered. He took a step closer to her. “I let you despise me for too long. I could have called for you like this and explained everything, but I didn’t. I believed there could be no forgiveness, despite my limited options. I wouldn’t expect Sasuke to ever forgive me either, even if he knew the truth.”

   She crossed her arms under the intensity of his gaze, but took a step toward him as well. “If he knew, he would, though.”

   “Do you believe Kakashi would forgive you, if he knew the truth about you?” he asked firmly.

   His words bit harshly at her but she understood what he was asking. “There’s a difference between what either would entail,” she muttered. “Sasuke may not love you right now… but he still loves his _brother_ , unconditionally. Kakashi… he’s known me for a long time, but he’s not… he’s not…” Her mouth twisted and she looked away, towards the fire instead of his eyes.

   She knew he understood what she wouldn’t say. “No, he’s not,” he agreed softly. “But you don’t believe he loves you? Unconditionally?”

   “I honestly don’t know,” she said. “But I hope he doesn’t.” She met his gaze again.

   Itachi was silent, watching her. She wondered if he knew how to bridge the gap between them, the gap that was only physical now, but she also wondered if this was all he’d summoned her for: to attempt an apology he must have known she wouldn’t accept. He seemed to read her mind, as he always did. “…You only have about six minutes before you have to go back to Konoha,” he said, taking another step towards her. They were only a foot away now. “But I have more to discuss with you.”

   She nodded, understanding then why he’d left his Sharingan activated. Her eyes didn’t waver from his, and he took it as permission to pull her inside his Tsukuyomi.

   Everything was red and black and yet still just as detailed. Time and space meant nothing in Tsukuyomi, so here they would have, literally, all the time they could possibly need to talk. Tsukuyomi was incredibly straining on his eyes as it was for every Uchiha, but it was also the safest place they had – just the two of them in a genjutsu that to the outside world lasted only a fraction of a second, where no one around them would ever know he’d even activated the ability for how instantaneous it was. And even in their protected location out in the middle of the woods, Tsukuyomi was necessary for the things they usually discussed. They simply couldn’t risk anything less.

   “I know our next target,” he began, “but I can’t tell you anything without it looking suspicious. What I can say is that they won’t move for a few weeks yet, and, if you can… try to stay out of Lightning.”

   She nodded. “What about me, though? Konoha has been on guard since I was rescued, assuming Akatsuki would try again as soon as possible.”

   He crossed his arms over his chest. “As long as Konoha protects you, we can’t reach you without essentially starting a war,” he explained, grimacing slightly at the very thought of such a thing. “Pein knows we’re not yet prepared for anything of that scale. But I assure you if one of them finds you vulnerable, there will be no repeat of last time. I won’t be able to help you again.”

   She gave him a look. _‘Again’?_

   “I’d had a plan,” he admitted, smirking at the expression on her face. “If your team hadn’t have arrived when they did I would have sabotaged the ritual myself, but if you were captured again _now_ , the situation would be different. With all of our members present I’d be unable to do anything.”

   She nodded again, a bit stunned. He could have risked everything with Akatsuki with such a plan…

   “I’m sorry,” he said suddenly, uncrossing his arms. He was a half-step closer than she remembered, his face, still cast in red and black, so close to hers that she could feel his breath on her face. “I let you believe your life was over once I’d captured you, and I observed in complacency as you made peace with that fact. For that I must apologize, no matter how much you don’t want me to.”

   She looked down at his chest, away from his piercing eyes, where the V-neck of his top revealed the fishnet shirt he wore beneath. “…Do you trust me?” she asked with a small smile, the question echoing across the years.

   He nodded, without hesitation.

   She met his gaze again. “Then remember that,” she said softly. “And I’ll promise to do the same. To remember the trust I promised you.”

   He watched her silently, and she took that for agreement.

   “…As far as Konoha is concerned,” she said hesitantly, following the same pattern they always used to years ago, after he’d first defected, “Tsunade is still well in control, but Danzou and the elders have started to get paranoid after what happened. He apparently threatened to keep me locked up in the Hokage Mansion, ‘for my protection.’ I have a feeling he’ll start to push for more power over the village soon enough.”

   He frowned. “Have you learned anything about his rumored organization?” he asked in reply.

   She shook her head. “Until he starts to move, we won’t know anything,” she said. “But if it exists, I imagine we’ll start to see his agents among our ranks.” Haru’s eyes softened. “As for Sasuke, though…”

   His eyes tightened slightly. “I know Orochimaru is preparing him for something,” he said, “perhaps to use him as a vessel for his attempts at immortality. But Sound’s movements have been quiet lately.”

   “That’s likely more bad than good,” she suggested, “but you seem to know more than we do about them right now.”

   “And that’s all I’ve found out.” His eyes seemed distant though they stayed with hers, and then he looked down suddenly, eyes tightening even further. “You should leave.”

   She put a hand on his chest before she could think twice, causing his gaze to flit back to hers. She’d seen that look in his eyes before, his attempt to hide. “I’d risk being seen on my return before I let you push me away like that,” she said. “…It’s soon, isn’t it? You think Sasuke will come for you?”

   He said nothing.

   “Then you can’t let it go on any longer, Itachi,” she said, anger beginning to lace her voice. “Just let me—“

   “There’s no time,” he interrupted, then wrapped his hand around the wrist at his chest. She didn’t remember his skin feeling so hot, even in Tsukuyomi, but then as soon as she thought it he didn’t feel so feverish anymore. “Not now. It would take hours to restore them to where they need to be and we don’t have that luxury.”

   “I’ll make time, Itachi,” she said, pushing herself impossibly closer to him. “If I can get them to put me on the right kind of mission—“

   He shook his head. “I can delay the deterioration enough that when Sasuke does come for me, I’ll be strong enough for him.” His eyes roamed her face then, seemingly unable to meet her eyes. “…That’s all I need, anyways, Haru.”

   She froze. “You—“ Her voice caught in her throat. He couldn’t mean—

   “Haru…”

   “No!” She pushed at his chest but forcefully grabbed at the fabric of his shirt with both hands before he could take a step back. His expression was pained. “You’re saying that – you’re telling you’ll _die_ before you’d—“

   Suddenly the Tsukuyomi was broken and the room came back to her in dark, vivid colors. She reached for him, meaning to restore the posture she’d had in his genjutsu and continue yelling at him until he agreed with her, but then he was doubling over, his hand over his mouth, coughing wetly in a fit he couldn’t seem to control. His entire upper body was convulsing with the force of it and she heard something drip onto the floor. Her hands, now shaking, went to his shoulders in a panic, her eyes flickering into her kekkei genkai, searching his organs for the problem, wide and fearful.

   She hadn’t observed his lungs in over two years.

   Haru’s heart skipped a beat, returning with a thunderous pounding that made her knees weak. Where before, years ago, she’d seen a growing disease that would have taken her only a day or two to heal with her Keigan, now there was a dark, fatal _monster_ – a level of decay in his respiratory system that she’d only seen before in corpses. She watched the blood drip from between his fingers as he continued coughing violently into the palm of his hand.

   Itachi was a dead man walking.

* * *

 


	16. Intuition

* * *

She’d been in the shower for over an hour when she heard a knock at her apartment door. Only when they knocked a second time a moment later did she decide she had better answer it.

   She shut off the water and toweled herself down, forcing herself to be quick about it, before she grabbed a shirt and pants off the floor and dressed without wasting time on her underclothes. They knocked a third time and she sighed as she approached the door, feeling water drip from the ends of her hair onto her rear. She peeked her head around the door as she opened it slowly.

   A messy tuft of silver hair greeted her. Kakashi turned around, seemingly surprised that she had answered. “Yo,” he said casually.

   “Kakashi,” she greeted, eyes wide. When was he ever up and about this early? “I’m sorry, I was in the shower… But come in, I’ll get some coffee brewing.”

   “I’m surprised it hasn’t been brewing already,” he chuckled, but followed her inside her small apartment to the kitchen, pulling on the wet ends of her hair playfully. “You should wear your hair down more often, Haru.”

   “Hey!” She pulled the wet strands over her shoulder where he could no longer reach, more amused than she was irritated. “ _You’re_ the reason I braid it most of the time, you know. Otherwise you don’t leave me alone.”

   He chuckled, having no response to that for how true it was.

   She gestured for him to sit down at the table and then set to work grinding out the coffee beans and measuring the right amount of water into the brewer, suddenly painfully aware of her lack of underclothes. With how often Kakashi saw her, even in civilian clothing, she was sure he would notice the difference – and she was sure she’d never been so underdressed around him before, even during missions. The thought was enough to make her blush from embarrassment, and she consciously kept her back to him as she finished setting up her coffee brewer. “…Excuse me for a moment,” she muttered then and made a beeline for her bedroom.

   Kakashi of course had been in her apartment many times before. It was one of his favorite things, it seemed, to drop in on her unannounced from time to time, but rarely did he ever show up before noon. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been in anything but her normal clothes or uniform when he dropped in. She let out an unconscious sigh of relief as she closed her bedroom door softly behind her, then fished through her bedside drawers for underwear, forgoing any wrappings that she would normally wear over her bra during fieldwork. It was a Saturday, after all, a day she was rarely ever assigned missions on.

   She looked at herself in the mirror after she had finished re-dressing, wondering if her guest would notice her lack of wrappings, too. Although, she wasn’t even sure he’d noticed her lack of underthings in the first place – but surely he had?

   Haru shook her head at herself. Why was she suddenly so concerned with dressing properly? It was only Kakashi, after all. She needed to relax.

   When she rejoined him in the kitchen, he was pulling a couple of mugs down from her cabinets, smiling innocently at her as she walked in. “I didn’t think you’d mind…” he said.

   “Not at all.”

   She took one of the mugs from him – the dark green one covered in small silver circles, her favorite one – and grabbed the coffeepot to pour for them.

   “I came by last night,” Kakashi said idly as he sat back at the table with his black and white polka dotted mug full and steaming, “just to let you know I’d made it back safely…”

   Haru swallowed the coffee she’d just sipped and leaned back on the kitchen counter. She forced herself to refrain from thinking of last night, knowing full well he’d sense her thoughtfulness. She met his eyes with her brow furrowed. “I’m sorry,” she replied. “I went out for a walk last night. I’m not sure when I got back…”

   “A walk?” he repeated, brows lifting. “Was something bothering you?”

   “No more than usual,” she said with a small smirk. “And it was nice outside for once, anyways. When did you get back from your mission?”

   “Around midnight, I think.” He looked down into his mug, and idly she wondered if he was really going to wait for her to turn around before he drank it. As if she hadn’t seen his face before… “We finished the mission two days ago, really. It took us that long to walk back.”

   Her brow furrowed again as she took another drink. “It’s never taken that long for me to reach the border…”

   “Half of our cell was sick from a poison,” he explained. “Hadn’t heard of the stuff before. Our medic kept them healthy enough to walk until we had an antidote but it was slow-going.”

   “But there _was_ an antidote? They’re alright?”

   He nodded and smiled. “You worry too much,” he chuckled. “They had one at the hospital. Had to fish it out of an older catalogue, apparently, but no lasting damage.”

   “Hmm.” She finished her coffee as she thought to herself, then turned to wash out the mug in the sink. When she turned back a minute or so later, Kakashi’s mug was empty and he had just finished pulling up his mask, his fingers still at the bridge of his nose. She shook her head at him with a tired smile but took his mug to wash it out as well.

   “I heard you and Ashikaru may have found evidence of an infiltrator the other night,” he said as she worked.

   Her fingers paused briefly but she caught herself and nodded. “…I actually haven’t heard any more about it yet. We sent out a search party yesterday but of course I couldn’t join them,” she explained. She remembered the feeling of the faint chakra signal out in the forest. “I’ve no idea what it was about.”

   “Hmm. And you both found blood?”

   “Yeah. There was a bit on the ground next to the southern wall, and then a handprint up near the top. I had the blood analyzed over at the hospital in the morning, though. She said… that…” Haru paused, her hands stilling, holding the sponge and mug under the running water. _“It looks like AB-type blood and saliva… and something else… an organic compound, like some kind of virus or parasite… I think I’ve seen it before…_. _”_

   Haru had seen it before, too. She just hadn’t had the equipment to recognize it.

   Kakashi stood from the table, walking towards his frozen companion, his hand gingerly outstretched towards her. He knew that posture. It meant trouble.

   _“I’ve had shinobi bring me samples that contained this compound before – very rarely, mind you… but still only enough to recognize it when I see it. It’s unique….”_ She saw the blood in her mind’s eye, on the ground, the handprint on the wall, inside the vial, coating the hand that covered his mouth and dripping onto the floor—

   Kakashi reached around her and turned the water off. The change in sound broke her out of it with a start and he had to catch the mug falling from her hand before it tumbled to the bottom of her steel sink. He placed it down carefully, watching her face as she began to come back to herself. Her brow furrowed tightly and she ran a hand through her loose brown hair, still damp.

   “Sorry,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper. “I… I didn’t sleep at all last night.”

   “What’s going on?” he asked softly, refraining from reaching out to her across the small distance between them. She seemed tense enough that he knew she wouldn’t appreciate the physical contact.

   She shook her head.

   “You were telling me about the blood…”

   She swallowed, then absently grabbed a towel from behind him on the counter to dry her hands. She turned and leaned back again against the countertop, her movements slow and careful, before she gradually stilled again. “I… I think I know whose blood it was…”

   The tears that welled up in her eyes again only made her angry.

* * *

 

_“Why the hell didn’t you come to me sooner?!”_

_Itachi winced as Haru lowered him back into the chair before the fire. He held his cloak in his hands to soak up the blood that coated them. “You only have three minutes, Haru,” he muttered, his voice much weaker than he’d intended. “You need to leave.”_

_“I’d sooner risk Tsunade’s anger before I left you like this,” she bit out, her hands roaming inside him now, her Keigan glistening in the firelight as she attempted to heal the damage his coughing fit had done on him._

_“And I’d sooner carry you back to the village myself,” he argued quietly. “There’s much more that rides on your prompt return than the Godaime’s wrath.”_

_She growled softly, trying to focus on healing him quickly. All she could heal were the raw areas in his lungs and trachea that his coughing had irritated – as for the rest, the root of the problem… She stared angrily through her tears at the disease she could now see plain as day, wondering at the same time when she had started to cry._

_“I have one more thing to apologize for before you go,” he said softly, pulling her out of her bitter focus._

_She glanced up at him briefly, noting the quiet look on his face and the way his eyes stayed steadily on hers even when she knew speaking must have pained him greatly. “I told you not to apologize for anything—“_

_“For kissing you,” he interrupted._

_Her hands stilled. Even before the words registered she was surprised he’d interrupted her at all – his manners rarely allowed him to do such a thing. And then she recalled the moment he was referring to and hastily resumed her work, intending to finish before she ran out of time. “I’d thought I was dying,” she whispered. “So had you.”_

_“The timing was inappropriate, to the point of it being manipulative,” he continued. “I took advantage of your fear, and mine as well. And… as it were…”_

_She shook her head, watching as she worked away the last of the rawness in his lungs that she could. He had never kissed her before that night. Perhaps on the cheek, when they were much, much younger, but never like that. She knew the words he couldn’t speak. She pulled her hands from his body and let her eyes fade back to green. “…Do you regret it?”_

_She caught the hesitation in his face as he considered her question, which told her it wasn’t something that had crossed his mind before that moment – unlike her, he rarely ever thought to regret, not when there was so much for him yet to do. After a short moment, he shook his head, eyes still steady on hers._

_“…It would be inappropriate now to kiss you again, wouldn’t it?” she whispered, her eyes tearing up again despite herself. “Given that…”_

_“That I am now the one soon to die,” he quietly finished for her, “yes. …It would be.”_

_She blinked as a tear escaped but she kept her face from crumpling, kept her lungs from heaving a sob. “Why wait?” she pleaded. “Why not come to me sooner? I could have…” She shook her head absently, a small, insignificant motion, as she watched his gaze._

_He read the double meaning and the pain behind her pleading. He decided not to answer. There were no words anymore for all of his intentions._

_So he kissed her again instead._

_Her hands went to the back of his head as his own gently cradled the backs of her arms. Where their first kiss had been soft, hesitant, dangerous, this one was all warmth, all feeling from deep in her bones, the desperation and every question she’d directed at him over the years. It was the youth they’d given away to their village, all the teenage feelings gone to waste for the shinobi way of life, all the childish dreaming and dreaming hopes she could still remember. And there was an anger in her lips that drove her forward into his frame, an apology and a longing still on his own that opened him to her every advance._

_He tried to pull away – they were so short of time, as they’d been all their lives – but the gentle firmness of her fingers in his hair made him linger a second or so longer, long enough to burn her lips into his memory, and the scent of earth and grapefruit and vanilla on her skin, and the way everything about her always felt so sudden and jarring. He would memorize the way her lips moved with his like it were choreography, he would study every change, every breath, and he knew she would do the same. He breathed her in deeply, moving his lips against hers one last time, then squeezed the backs of her arms to communicate their need._

_She pulled back as if that very action depleted all of her strength, her brow furrowed and eyes wet, lips rosier than they’d been before and pursed together in consternation. Her abdomen brushed over his knee as she leaned back on her heels._

_“You’re late,” he whispered weakly. “You have to run.”_

_“You—“_

_“I left my medication behind when I came here,” he assured her, “and once I take it again I’ll be well enough.”_

_“Itachi…” she began, but he was right, if she didn’t make it back under the dark cover of night, she wasn’t sure that she’d be able to reenter Konoha unseen. Her absence wouldn’t be easily explained, and even with an excuse, the risk she’d incurred in coming alone would outweigh any reason she had in taking it on. She pierced the man with a hard stare, knowing he would understand her. “Please. Try.”_

_“There is no guarantee of another window like the one we’ve just taken advantage of,” he said quickly, “but… if you find another…”_

_His hand enclosed over her open palm, and when he pulled away she held a small scroll. Without another word on his part she knew what to do, and she nodded and tucked the scroll into the pouch at her hip._

_His steady gaze was the only goodbye he afforded her as she looked back at him from the doorway a few seconds later, her shoes back on and her eyes dried._

_They’d said their real goodbyes when she was fourteen. The time for it was long over._

* * *

 


	17. Dismantle, Repair

Haru pressed her fingers to her temples momentarily as she stood facing the door out of her apartment, wondering how understanding Tsunade would be. She knew she’d be happy to not have to send Haru outside of Konoha for a while, but Haru was also one of the few ANBU shinobi who willingly signed up for night-watches – not to mention the advantage in observation skills that her kekkei genkai lent her. Only the Hyuuga clan would be more suited to catching abnormalities in the dark than she would be, but the Hyuuga would never consider such menial guard work over more respectable missions. Absently Haru wondered too if Ashikaru would be annoyed at the inevitable increase in night-watches that her absence would cause.

   She sighed, dropping her hands from her temples and opening her front door to the late morning air. She needed to just get it over with. There was work to be done.

   Konoha was busy as always at this time of day, with citizens and shinobi alike crowding the streets and the various shops. She thought she saw a tuft of bright blonde hair sitting at Ichiraku Ramen but only smiled softly to herself and kept walking. As much as Haru was an introvert, this was her favorite time of day to walk through her village – these crowds were her motivation for nearly everything she did as a shinobi. These were the people she was meant to protect, the ones she would fight endlessly for to grant peace and opportunity, and walking among them on a daily basis as she did was her reminder of that.

   Shinobi life was difficult, and demanding, and often crushing on her mind and her heart, but she had a responsibility to the innocent of the Village Hidden in the Leaves. Normally taking a leave from missions as she was intending to do this morning would have contradicted that sense of duty, but her reasons were important. It was a different branch of that same responsibility. If she didn’t do this…

   She quieted the thought as she entered Hokage Mansion. She _would_ do this. There was no room for failure and she couldn’t allow herself to consider the consequences of failure any longer – she’d cried enough already for one day.

   Tsunade was sitting at her desk poring over a set of scrolls when she entered, neglecting to knock at the absence of guards outside the door. She looked up as the shinobi entered, her face showing mild surprise at seeing Haru there. She hadn’t summoned her, after all.

   “I hope I’m not bothering you, Tsunade-sama,” she said as she approached, eyeing the piles of scrolls and missives on and around her desk. Of course, her desk was almost always in such a state.

   “Not at all, Chiharu,” said the Hokage and gestured for her to sit. “I’ve been meaning to take a break for hours. You can only sign your name so many times before you start to feel your brain cells decay…”

   Haru forced a smile – the thought of cell decay was a bit hard to swallow, as it was. “No sake today?”

   “Sake would only speed up the death of my brain cells right now,” Tsunade laughed boisterously. “Anyways, what brings you here today? I don’t think I have any missions available for you right now…”

   She shook her head. “That’s… good, actually,” she began. “…I was wanting to request a short leave.”

   Tsunade’s brow furrowed, but she didn’t seem entirely displeased at the request. “How long were you thinking?”

   “Just a week or two.”

   “Hmm.” The Godaime regarded the shinobi in front of her almost warily. “That certainly would make my job easier right now, considering who’s out there… but it’s been a long time since you last made this request. I distinctly remember you telling me the hit your wallet took when you returned from the last one, even with the hospital work.”

   “I’ve saved up enough that a week wouldn’t hurt,” she reassured her. “And I’ll be doing some work at the hospital again…”

   Tsunade nodded pensively, then shrugged. “Works for me,” she said, then took out a few forms and made notes, Haru guessed, on the details of her leave. “I’ll expect you back in here in a week, then… whether you’re ready to come back, or if you need another week, or whatever.”

   Haru nodded and stood from the chair, idly gripping the strap of her cross-body bag with both hands. “Thank you, Hokage-sama.” She made to leave.

   “Chiharu,” Tsunade called, and Haru turned back to face her. “…You’re not worried about Akatsuki, are you?”

   The younger woman’s mouth pursed slightly, considering how to respond.

   “I mean of course you are,” the Hokage amended. “But this doesn’t have to do with that, does it? …It’s not like you to shy away from such threats, even considering the unique dangers of this one…”

   Haru shook her head after a moment, reeling a bit from the Hokage’s concern – something she wasn’t quite accustomed to. “…I’m not worried, Tsunade-sama,” she said ultimately. “This isn’t really about them. I just figured it was time for a bit of a break.”

   Tsunade nodded seriously after a small moment, then waved her off. “Good,” she said is dismissal. “Those bastards aren’t worth the stress anyways.”

   Haru smirked as she left the office.

   She took the walk to the hospital at a hastier pace than before, actively trying not to distract herself by watching the people bustling around her. As far as she was concerned, there was no time to lose – the faster she figured everything out, the faster she’d be able to help Konoha’s most loyal agent. She unconsciously pulled her bag closer against her body.

   By the time she reached the hospital’s labs, her heart was pounding. The building was particularly busy today, and the labs were no exception – there were half a dozen medics at various pieces of equipment and machinery all working diligently with little room for conversation. The only sound in the large room were pages flipping, machines whirring, and the tapping of fingers on keyboards.

   She spotted Himura Itsume on the opposite side of the room, her eyes trained on a microscope as they had been when she’d first met her. With the relative silence in the room, Haru wasn’t sure how best to broach the subject she needed to discuss with her, but she approached her all the same and hoped she didn’t draw too much attention.

   “Himura-san?” she whispered.

   Itsume looked up from her work, eyes wide with curiosity. “Tanade-san!” she muttered when she recognized the shinobi. “Did you bring me another sample?”

   _Straight to business, then,_ Haru thought, trying to hide her nervous amusement. “Well – could I speak to you outside?” she requested quietly, noting as a medic to her left began to stare at her in mild irritation. “It’s… a sensitive situation.”

   Itsume nodded, brow raised, but followed her out into the hallway.

   There were still too many people roaming the halls for Haru’s liking, but it would have to do. “I’m sorry to distract you from your work,” she began politely and quietly, “but… in that blood sample… you said you’d seen that unknown compound before.”

   The medic nodded. “Only a few times, but again,” she said, matching Haru’s volume, “never enough to do proper research on it.”

   Haru nodded solemnly. “Still,” she said, “you’re the closest to an expert on it that I have. I have reason to believe that this same… _thing_ … is killing someone close to me. I was able to make some brief observations of their condition, but I can’t even hope to cure it without understanding exactly what this stuff is.”

   Itsume regarded her with a frown. “I’m very sorry about your friend,” she said hesitantly. “But unless I have more of it to work with—“

   “I still have what’s left in the vial,” she muttered quickly, pulling it out of her bag with a protectively tight grip. “I know that ideally – I know we’d _need_ more of it to find out anything for absolutely sure, but circumstances don’t permit that I can get more of it right now, and if I don’t figure it out soon…” She sighed, and closed her eyes briefly to calm herself before she could continue. “I need to do this. The situation isn’t ideal, but I’d really like your help with it. You’ve studied it a little before, and I’m not very experienced with the equipment necessary to analyze it. I… need your help. Please.”

   Itsume took in her words thoughtfully, crossing her arms over her ribs. Already the gears seemed to be working in the medic’s head. “…Alright,” she said slowly after a moment. “I’ll help you as much as I can. But if we don’t find anything…”

   Haru nodded, refraining from sighing in relief. She wasn’t used to begging, and in general would never have resorted to it, but she barely knew the medic across from her and the situation demanded urgency. “Thank you, Himura-san.”

   “You can call me Itsume,” she replied in a chuckle. “We’re colleagues now, after all.”

   The shinobi nodded. “One more thing, before we begin,” she muttered hesitantly. “I know I said this is about someone close to me, but… any information gathered on whose blood this is, on the disease or whatever it is in the blood, anything at all related to this… it must be treated as highly classified intel. If any of this information reaches anyone besides you and I, the consequences will be dire. People could get hurt.”

   Itsume raised a brow at her.

   “That wasn’t a threat,” Haru amended quickly. “Sorry. But the research we do could have some very significant implications that could, in a worst case scenario, damage the lives of innocent people. I can’t say why. But, please, I need your utmost discretion.”

   “Alright, you have my word. But…this isn’t illegal, is it?” she whispered conspiratorially. “I get what you’re saying and I’ll do it either way, but just out of curiosity…?”

   “…I’m not sure,” Haru answered as best as she could. “Probably not…?”

   Itsume nodded with a determined look on her face. “Well, alright then. Let’s get started.”

* * *

 

For the fifth time that week, Kakashi overcame his irrational aversion and found himself in the hospital.

   Of course, it was different being there when he was perfectly healthy versus when he’d been injured in the past, but it went against his better judgment all the same. He blamed a certain brunette for having him so worried that he even considered being there. Especially after the last conversation they’d really had, however, he felt he didn’t quite have a choice but to be concerned.

   It wasn’t uncommon, of course, for her to lock herself away often for days on end to conduct research on this or that jutsu, on missing-nin for upcoming missions, even on her own kekkei genkai and clan history. He distinctly remembered a few periods where she’d been M.I.A. for a couple of weeks because she’d been scouring the country for scrolls about her family and their unique bloodline limit – without telling anyone but the Hokage where she’d gone. He couldn’t blame her as far as that research went, however, considering that there was no one left in her clan for her to find anything out from. The Fire had seen to that, and he understood how passionate that would make her when it came to anything about her clan.

   But this was different. As much as he could be grateful that at the very least she’d stayed in Konoha and not run off to Kami-knows-where for her research, the reasons she had this time around were – dare he say – questionable.

   “ _I think I know whose blood it was,”_ she’d told him, and he’d waited patiently for her to continue, seeing how badly it had affected her. _“The… the last time I saw him… I’d seen something with the Keigan that I… didn’t really understand. But now… I… I think it’s Itachi’s…”_ She hadn’t told him much more after that, only what she hadn’t been able to finish about what she’d found in his blood at the hospital. Really, she didn’t need to. It was enough to understand that Uchiha Itachi was dangerously sick.

   After that, he didn’t see her for a few days before he figured he’d better look for her. He knew how close she had been with the Uchiha before he’d massacred his clan, and he could assume there had to be some sort of cognitive dissonance in hearing that an old friend was badly ill, even if they were enemies now. After a few hours of searching and asking around, he’d found her in the hospital, working in the labs with a medic he wasn’t sure he’d met before.

   He’d visited her every day since then – it had been a week since he’d been in her apartment. But he had only approached her once on one of his visits, simply to let her know he’d been wondering where she was, preferring instead to leave her alone when she looked this focused and severe. He wanted to say more, he wanted her to know he was worried about her, but he knew his concern wouldn’t stop her from what she was doing.

   He watched her now as she bent over an almost-filled journal, writing quickly, dark circles under eyes and her hair braided down her back to (unsuccessfully) keep it out of her face while she worked. There were other journals and pieces of medical equipment strewed around the table she occupied in the now vacant lab, and the light over her table was the only one on in the entire expansive room. It was close to midnight – he could only assume she’d barely gone home to sleep this entire week.

   Ultimately he couldn’t stand it any longer, he decided as he watched her flex her fingers around the pen in her hand from the doorway. He approached her carefully, but loudly enough that he thought he wouldn’t startle her. When his figure filled her periphery, however, she nearly jumped out of her stool.

   “What on earth are you doing?!” she gasped, getting out of her seat to retrieve her pen from where she’d flung it at him before it clattered to the floor.

   “Sorry,” he said, suppressing a laugh.

   “What are you doing down here?” she asked tiredly as she resituated herself on the stool. Her brow furrowed as she glanced back at her notes, seeming to struggle to remember what she’d been writing.

   “You’ve been in that same stool for a week now,” he said, as if that were explanation enough. “I’m assuming you haven’t moved an inch since I last saw you.”

   She gave a noncommittal noise and returned to her journal to finish the line she’d been jotting down when he’d interrupted her.

   Kakashi crossed his arms and leaned one hip on the table, careful not to jostle any nearby equipment. “Are you intending to live down here?”

   She finished writing and then turned towards him with a brow raised. “I told Tsunade-sama I’d only be on leave for a week, two at max,” she said. “I need to figure this out as quickly as possible.”

   He frowned at her. “…You realize what it is you’re doing, right?”

   She frowned back.

   “You’re researching a disease of some sort that’s only plaguing _one_ person,” he continued. “Who, may I remind you, has been trying to kill you and your friends for years. Who massacred his entire family. And you’re obsessing over his condition.”

   He watched her temples twitch as her jaw clenched, and her eyes were hard-set. “This isn’t just about him.”

   “Isn’t it?”

   She stood up suddenly, the stool clattering to the ground behind her. Perhaps, he recognized, he’d pushed a little too hard. “Look,” she bit out, glaring up at him. “Think about it. What I saw – what I’ve been seeing in my research – whatever this disease is, it’s likely not a coincidence that it’s affecting an Uchiha. You know firsthand how badly the Sharingan deteriorates over time and yours is only a transplant. Imagine being the original carrier from the original clan – you and I have seen firsthand how his fighting style has changed as a result of that deterioration. And I saw – I saw his organs deteriorating at the _same rate_. I’d seen it years ago when I fought him but just didn’t realize, and what I saw recently—“ She stopped herself, jaw clenching again, and took a steadying breath. “…My point is, what if this isn’t as isolated as it seems? What if it’s related to their ocular deterioration – what if it’s genetic? What if it happens to Sasuke, too? If Sasuke lives long enough to have children, what if they get it?”

   He watched her face thoughtfully. He still had a bad feeling about the whole situation, but she was right. If Sasuke was ever redeemed – even if he wasn’t – this would be a concern later on. And Sasuke was six years younger than Itachi, meaning it was possible it could be a concern now, depending on when Itachi first started showing symptoms. But still there was something about how passionate Haru’s concern was that told Kakashi to be wary, to warn her. He just didn’t quite know how to put it into words. “Is your research showing that it’s genetic?” he asked instead.

   She sighed and leaned over the table. She must have been exhausted if she laid down her anger so quickly. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “I don’t quite have evidence for it but it’s one of the few possibilities that really makes sense. …I feel like I’m onto something, like I’m getting close, but…” She thumbed a page in her journal, scanning her notes absently.

   He sighed as well, but only in anticipation of what he wanted to communicate. “Haru,” he said quietly, and she tensed at his tone. “…I know you were close with both Sasuke and Itachi but…”

   She opened her mouth to protest but he placed a hand on her upper arm gently, asking her implicitly to hear him out. She closed her mouth tightly and didn’t relax.

   “But don’t lose yourself in this,” he continued softly. “…You can’t save them.”

   She bristled visibly and wrenched her arm away from him. “You think I’m deluded,” she snapped. “But you don’t understand, and I’ll never be able to help you understand. …Try telling Naruto he can’t save Sasuke and see where that leads you. I guarantee he’d be just as pissed off at you as I am.”

   “I didn’t mean—“

   “But you did,” she interrupted harshly.

   The look in her eyes was guarded and angry but, he could admit, not delusional, even given her lack of sleep. He’d probably miscalculated and he knew she had a right to be angry but he still couldn’t shake the feeling that there was more to this than he could see. He figured out pretty quickly, however, that he definitely shouldn’t have pushed it.

   “I know what you mean when you say I can’t save them, and maybe I can’t,” she went on, her tone just as biting, “but I can’t sit on the knowledge that this disease exists and not do anything about it. You think they’d be better off dying from it but you’re not a medic. You don’t get what this means – what this means to _me_. So, please, just leave me alone.”

   He took a step back from the table but couldn’t move any farther. “Haru—“

   “Go.”

   Her back was to him now as she forcefully righted her stool and hunched back over her journal, leaning her head in her hand in such a way that he could no longer see the anger on her face.

   So he left, decidedly ignoring the pang in his chest.

* * *

 


	18. Patron Saint of Lost Causes

* * *

Haru put her pen down, stretching out her fingers before using both hands to rub at her weary eyes. The deep breath she took came out in a sigh of tired relief.

   She’d spent the night in the lab again, having refused to leave even when Itsume offered to buy her dinner. It wasn’t the first time it had happened over the last week and a half, but at least this time she had something to show for it.

   While Itsume had still been on the clock, they’d used their dwindling supply of the blood sample finally on a small pig, and with her Keigan and some of the equipment around the lab had been able to observe what the agent in the blood was doing that was making it so deadly. After successfully healing the pig (which she knew didn’t really say anything about whether she’d be able to do the same on a human) and sending it on its way, they’d run a few more tests and gathered some more data before Itsume had to clock out. Haru had spent the rest of the night researching the effects of similar diseases, the symptoms, and the umbrella terms that the disease fell under; and then spent the small hours of morning writing down all of her findings in her journal as organized and clear as she could.

   The unknown organic agent in the blood, while they still couldn’t identify it exactly, caused a type of degenerative disease that specifically attacked the bronchi of a person’s lungs – which she had seen very briefly with her Keigan, but given the late stage that Itachi had reached, had been unable to see it given the mess that was the rest of his respiratory system. She knew, then, that from the bronchi the disease spread to the inner walls of the lungs, and from there even to the trachea and, in late stages, to the rest of the lungs.

   The disease had likely stemmed from either a birth defect or from early childhood: her research had pointed her towards similar degenerative diseases that had a trend of starting in that way. While she had no way of proving it yet, she still had a feeling that the disease in his lungs was not unrelated to the deterioration in his eyes. It was entirely possible that something in Uchiha genetics, possibly as a result of the Sharingan over generations, made them more susceptible to cell deterioration; and, thus, more susceptible to degenerative birth defects like she suspected Itachi had.

   But of course all of this was essentially speculative until she could actually monitor and examine Itachi’s condition. Even if she were to stick to the half-formed plan Itachi had handed her when she saw him last, the one meeting that plan would afford them wouldn’t be enough. The best way to help him at all would be to monitor changes in his condition over time, to analyze the exact effect the disease had on his tissues, to test whether it was attacking at the cellular level or whether it was written into his DNA – none of which she could accomplish in their current situation.

   She turned a few pages in her journal, reviewing some of her findings for the hundredth time, hoping something might stick out at her to help her figure out how to help him. Even if she wasn’t essentially grounded by Tsunade, she’d need to be away from Konoha for weeks to make any real headway on his condition. And even then, there was no way she could just abandon the village for that long. She was a Leaf shinobi and she had a responsibility not just to her fellow shinobi, but to the citizens of Konoha – as much as she hated to recall some of the righteous, bigoted things her parents had tried to instill in her, they were right that being a Tanade, a possessor of the Keigan, put her in a unique position that many depended on. It was the same with any possessor of a kekkei genkai: they all had a unique role to fill as shinobi in order to protect the Land of Fire – she remembered distinctly how the Uchiha’s role had affected Konoha after their extinction, how their Police force had crumbled and had to be filled in by less experienced, less able shinobi who, of course, had no Sharingan to aid them. She couldn’t abandon Konoha and leave them to deal with her absence like that. But then again… technically…

   She shook her head, losing her train of thought. Ultimately, she was too exhausted. She’d need to rest at least for a few hours before she could even think about working anymore. At least, she decided, she knew at a basic level what she was dealing with when it came to Itachi’s condition – that was something.

   Haru gathered her journal and all the loose leaf papers and scrolls she’d been working from into her bag, before hanging it from her shoulder and standing from her well-worn stool. She’d already cleaned up the equipment earlier and packed away the vial, which now only had a drop or two of the sample left in it. Sighing, she made her way out of the labs and out of the hospital.

   Medics were still bustling around the lobby as she left. She imagined it was close to five or six in the morning, seeing navy blue begin to creep into the black sky in the east, and realized contentedly that this meant she’d probably be able to sleep in for a few more hours than she’d estimated initially.

   Her contentedness ended abruptly, however. Sakura was at her side all of a sudden, nearly out of breath.

   “There you are! I thought I’d gotten wrong directions to your apartment since there was no answer,” she said. “Tsunade-shishou needs us in her office.”

   “The sun hasn’t even risen yet,” said Haru, her brow furrowing. “What’s going on that she needs us this early?”

   “She didn’t say,” Sakura confessed. “But she asked for Naruto and Kakashi-sensei, too.”

* * *

 

Kakashi and Naruto were already standing anxiously in Tsunade’s office by the time Sakura and Haru arrived. Haru hadn’t the energy to waste on greetings, however, and it seemed Tsunade didn’t either.

   “Jiraiya sent me a report earlier this morning,” the Hokage began sternly, sitting behind her desk with her fingers woven under her chin. “According to his contacts, Sasuke killed Orochimaru two days ago.”

   A few moments of stunned silence passed before Naruto spoke up. “Sasuke killed Orochimaru?”

   “So he’s free?” Sakura asked quietly. Haru could see tears forming in her eyes that she didn’t let fall.

   “He’ll come back to Konoha, then!!” Naruto shouted, unable to contain his hopeful grin.

   “Not necessarily,” Tsunade warned. “Sasuke could still be under his or Kabuto’s influence.”

   “But we captured Kabuto,” Kakashi countered.

   The Hokage shook her head. “He escaped while we were moving him to a more secure prison outside Konoha weeks ago. We had to assume he’d made it back to his master.”

   “But with Orochimaru gone—“ Sakura began.

   “There’s no telling what Sasuke is doing now,” Tsunade interrupted. “We don’t know why he turned on Orochimaru and we don’t know if his mind’s been taken over. All we do know is that he was seen traveling out of Sound, and that there are reliable sources who know that he did kill Orochimaru himself.”

   “I doubt Konoha is his destination,” Haru added solemnly. She crossed her arms over her chest and kept her eyes trained on Tsunade, wondering with a twist in her stomach whether this really meant what she thought it did.

   Sakura and Naruto shared a look, seeming to follow Haru’s same train of thought.

   “Do you think…” Sakura started.

   Naruto’s lips made a grave line. “I think… when he used to talk about revenge against his brother,” he said, “…I think he might be planning to kill him.”

   Haru’s fingers tightened around her biceps as she stared at her fellow jinchuuriki.

   “So – maybe we could use that,” said Sakura soberly, though her eyes were hopeful.

   Kakashi took a step forward. “You’re saying we go through Itachi to find Sasuke,” he mused. “That’s assuming that Itachi will be easier to find than Sasuke would be.” He glanced warily at Haru, whose gaze still rested on Naruto.

   “But if that’s what Sasuke’s trying to do, he wouldn’t want us to find him,” said Naruto, almost sadly. “And if we did he’d just run away. But if we found Itachi first—“

   “You’re suggesting we kill him?” Haru asked him, her voice hoarser than she’d expected – whether from the knot she felt in her throat or from two days of disuse, she wasn’t sure. “Even if we could – which I assure you we wouldn’t – that would only piss Sasuke off more than anything.”

   “No,” said Kakashi, “we’d need to capture him alive. If Sasuke is tracking him, he’d come right to us.”

   Haru’s brow furrowed and she opened her mouth to speak, but Tsunade beat her to it.

   “It would take more than just your team to track him and take him down,” she said. “If this could really work—“

   “It will,” said Naruto, fire in his eyes. Haru had never seen him look so serious.

   Sakura and Kakashi both nodded with him, so Tsunade continued. “Alright,” she said. “Kakashi, go and gather Team 8. Sakura and Naruto, you two go find Yamato. I want the three of you and the four of them back in my office in an hour.”

   Haru’s heart skipped a beat. “Wait, what?”

   “You heard me, Chiharu,” Tsunade said sternly. Her eyes betrayed sympathy.

   “ _’The three of you’_?” she repeated. “You want me to stay behind while the rest of them risk their lives finding _Itachi_? You can’t be serious.”

   “Chiharu, it’s too risky to send you outside the walls after Akatsuki—“

   “You’d send _Naruto_!” she shouted, unable to maintain her composure. “What about the risk to his life? He has the fucking _Nine-Tails_ – you think Akatsuki would give up so easily if they got a hold on _him_?!”

   “Enough!” Tsunade bellowed, standing suddenly from behind her desk as her fists nearly broke it in half. “You haven’t had the training Naruto has in controlling the Tailed-Beast, not to mention that it’s the recent attack against you from their organization that puts you the most at risk in going after them. It’s likely they know your chakra signature far better than they know his after you spent days in their hideout.” Her eyes narrowed. “You will stay behind.”

   The room fell into a deafening silence. Haru was seething, furious to her core with every word the Godaime had said, but she offered nothing in response. There was nothing to be said. Instead, she turned away and left the building without a single glance behind her.

   When she was halfway to her apartment, Kakashi appeared beside her. “Haru—“

   “What?” she snapped, keeping her eyes forward.

   He huffed a steadying breath. “You can still convince her,” he began. “You’d have more than a full protective cell, we could even—“

   “She won’t listen,” she said wearily, jaw clenched in anger. “She’s under this delusion that I’m somehow a special target.”

   “Maybe you are, maybe you aren’t,” Kakashi said quickly as they were nearing her apartment. “But, despite everything that’s happened, you know Itachi better than any of us do.”

   Her feet stilled. He stopped and turned to face her.

   “A few of us have met him maybe once or twice over the years,” he went on. “I’m sure I went on missions with him as an ANBU a couple times, but you – you grew up with him. You were friends with him for years up until the massacre. And even after that, you worked with him during that S-rank mission – you spent time with him since he’s been a criminal that none of us have. If anyone can track him down and have any hope of capturing him, it’s you.”

   She took a deep breath and closed her eyes to all the memories stirring at his words. He was more right than even he knew. But her head was swimming, and light, and if she didn’t lay down soon she’d be no help to anyone. She shook her head. “She won’t listen to me, not now. And I can’t think straight like this.”

   He ran a hand through his already tousled hair. “Then clear your head and then go back. The Elders have put a lot of pressure on her about you, otherwise I’m sure she would have acquiesced. But she knows all this – she knows you’d be valuable with us. You just have to convince her it would work.”

   She looked up at him. “What about you?” she asked. When her question was met with a blank stare, she went on. “You’d trust me to go after _Itachi_?”

   He sighed again. “…I would,” he said quietly. “Look, I was wrong. To say any of the things I said. It’s just… I wish you weren’t right – about any of this – because I want you to be safe. But you _are_ right. …I know I always poke fun at you for worrying so much, but I probably worry twice as much as you do…”

   She broke his gaze to rub her eyes wearily. “Okay,” she said. “I just… I need to sleep at least for a few hours, and then I’ll try to get her to let me meet you out there.”

   Kakashi nodded, and it seemed like there was something else he wanted to say – but the longer he stared into her tired eyes the easier it was to decide not to say it. He waved at her, the same way he always did, and then he was off to retrieve his new team.

   Haru dragged herself into her apartment, head swimming restlessly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So because of the language in this chapter, the rating is changing from T to M - hopefully this doesn't bother anyone too much! But this M rating does give me some leeway for future chapters as far as how I choose to write certain details...
> 
> Anyways, hope you're all enjoying the story so far! Thank you as always for the lovely comments! It means a lot to me.


	19. Hands, Like Secrets

* * *

Haru hadn’t been able to sleep. Despite how exhausted she was after running on six hours of rest over the last three days, her head was swimming so much that she could barely even lay down before she felt like she needed to take a walk or something of the sort. So instead, she’d gone over her medical notes again, piecing things together and formulating plans for treating the disease, despite the nagging thought in the back of her head that if she didn’t get out on the field before Sasuke reached his target, it would be all for naught.

   But she had to do this. If not to empty out her head so she could rest at least a little, then because something deep within her was pushing her to do so. She had to finish what little she could do in her position. She had to know a plan of attack. So she wrote.

   As far as where her research and observations were pointing her, there were three _ideal_ possibilities. Either she:

   One, assume or find evidence that Itachi had been _born_ with cancer-like cells that spread the deterioration to his lungs (and, possibly, his eyes as well) and that fixing or eradicating his body of these cells would heal him and prevent any further degeneration; meaning spending weeks to completely heal all damage and signs of deterioration using her Keigan.

   Two, assume or find evidence that the disease could only be contained and not eradicated; meaning healing him as completely as possible at regular intervals over time to keep him from dying of it.

   Or three, assume or find evidence that A, her Keigan could change the makeup of living cells, and B, the disease was not technically genetic, but merely manifesting in his cells as the result of a birth defect (and also C, it would be different from whatever caused the Uchiha’s ocular deterioration which also meant she’d have to come up with a different strategy to heal his eyes;) meaning that she would have to figure out a way to change the cell structure of his respiratory system such that he could develop an immunity to the disease.

   The way she saw it, each possibility was just as difficult to tackle as the last. Silently she hoped that she might find something while observing him that would provide her with a much easier fourth option, but even knowing how little she knew for sure, she doubted that such a fourth possibility could exist.

   She put down her pen for the second time that day, glancing out her bedroom window at the daylight that now blanketed the village – Kakashi and his team must have been long gone, as more than likely they’d left at sunrise. She felt mentally exhausted now, which was a good thing. Hopefully it meant that as soon as her head hit the pillow, she’d be asleep.

   But she couldn’t help but notice that where before there had been a restlessness in her gut telling her to get her ideas out of her head onto paper, now she was left with a sort of sinking feeling. Not that something felt wrong, or that she had missed something, but the feeling was more… foreboding. In an odd way. She couldn’t place it, and had a separate, distinct feeling that she didn’t really want to.

   She forced herself to stand and walk to her bed, falling into it and half-heartedly removing her only pair of non-work shoes. She’d managed to take off her pants, at least, before she fell into a deep sleep.

* * *

 

When she awoke, her room was painted in oranges and reds and a lance of panic shot through her. She’d slept until sundown.

   Cursing, she leapt out of bed and dressed herself in her black ANBU uniform without the armor, hoping Tsunade wouldn’t see her attire as her assuming she’d be leaving no matter what. She tied up her knee-length boots hastily and all but ran out of her apartment, deciding to leap over the rooftops to make it to Hokage Mansion. She cursed herself vehemently for oversleeping as she approached, despite feeling more rested and awake than she had all week.

   She knocked quickly at the door to Tsunade’s office, hoping against hope that she’d be willing to listen. The Hokage called her inside and she entered warily.

   “Hokage-sama,” she greeted respectfully, bowing a little after she closed the door behind her.

   “Chiharu,” Tsunade said, raising a brow at her. She’d been poring over what looked to be maps of a forested area.

   Haru approached her desk. “…I wanted to apologize for my outburst earlier.”

   “There’s no need, Chiharu,” the Godaime responded tiredly. “I know how frustrating it is to know your friends are at risk out on the field. You should understand I didn’t make the decision lightly.”

   “I do understand,” Haru said. Anxiety was rising in her gut as the sun began to disappear behind the horizon. “…All the same, please hear me out, Tsunade-sama.”

   Tsunade regarded her wearily, as if she already knew what was coming.

   “I know the dangers of being out there with the threat of Akatsuki about better than anyone,” she began. “I know why you, and I think more so the Elders, are so averse to putting me in that line of fire. But I also know Uchiha Itachi better than any other shinobi in this village.”

   Tsunade sighed, interlacing her fingers in front of her mouth and looking down at her desk.

   “If their mission is to succeed, they _need_ me out there,” she continued. She hated talking about herself in such a way, but she knew it was her only hope. She needed to be out there just as much as Kakashi’s team needed her to be there. “My clan was close with the Uchiha – I grew up with Itachi and I’ve known him for as long as I can remember. Of course he’s changed since then, but I am the most qualified to track him, Tsunade-sama. And if they don’t find him, there will be no chance of finding Sasuke.”

   The blonde met her eyes again. “…So then what are you suggesting?” she asked sternly. “You can’t go alone.”

   “Send another shinobi ahead of me to inform Kakashi of my addition to the cell,” she said, the plan formulating itself in her head as she spoke. “Then they and I will go and scout the region for them. I can guarantee I’ll find a lead within an hour of reaching their area. Then I can go ahead of the team and report back what they need to prepare for.”

   “And what if the Akatsuki find you before you find them?” she argued.

   “That’s a risk worth taking,” Haru said quietly. “And knowing how spread out Akatsuki usually is, it will only be Itachi and Kisame out there that we need to worry about. Worst case scenario, we’ll evade them and lead them back to Kakashi’s team. …But they won’t find me, Tsunade-sama. They caught me off guard before, but I’ll make sure that’s impossible this time.”

   Tsunade considered everything for a moment, then groaned and ran a hand over her face. “The Elders are going to have my head,” she muttered. After another short moment of pensively regarding Haru and her tense posture, she said louder, “Fine. You’re right. But if anything goes wrong, Chiharu, I swear—“

   “You have nothing to worry about, Hokage-sama,” she replied. “I can do this.”

   The Godaime sighed. “Gear up. You’ll meet Sai outside the village gates and leave immediately. The last report I received from the team said they were near the border to Iron, and had just lost the trail in a city nearby.”

   Haru nodded solemnly, her stomach fluttering with the same odd feeling from earlier. “I’ll send you a report as soon as I’m in the area.”

   “You _will_ come back safely, Chiharu,” Tsunade said before the shinobi in front of her could leave. Haru paused in the doorway. “That’s an order from your Hokage.”

   She only nodded, and closed the door behind her.

* * *

 

She’d sealed away nearly everything she needed into a discreet scroll, including her now filled medical journal, extra knives and rolls of wire, and basic necessities like a travelling cloak, spare uniform, sleeping bag, and nutrition bars, among various other just-in-case items. As much as she doubted it would take her too long to set Kakashi’s team on the right path, she couldn’t be sure that she’d be coming back for at least a few days. There were so many different possible outcomes for this mission that it made her head swim again just trying to prepare for the most likely of them.

   As she outfitted herself in her tailored black version of the ANBU armor, she forced herself to face what she’d been avoiding since that morning: Sasuke had killed Orochimaru, and was, without a doubt in her mind, going after Itachi for his long-sought-after revenge. He’d done exactly what Itachi had told him to do all those years ago, had become strong enough to face him and had filled himself with hatred. And she knew Itachi would not deny him. If he truly was strong enough to match his older brother, he would make this their final battle.

   Her hands stilled as she finished tying her black hitai-ate around her thigh. Itachi was planning to die at Sasuke’s hand. He’d all but told her that in their last meeting: _“I can delay the deterioration enough that when Sasuke does come for me, I’ll be strong enough for him. …That’s all I need, anyways, Haru.”_ It was a part of his plan that he’d never told her – he’d been hiding the fatality of his illness from her as much as he had from the rest of the world, and the thought alone shook her to her core. How long had he known? And why – _why_ – did he feel this was his only option, knowing full well that Haru could most likely have cured him of the disease ages ago?

   Somewhere in the back of her mind she felt she probably already knew the answer. But if she could help Kakashi and his team successfully capture Itachi – and she knew this was a big ‘if’ – then his and Sasuke’s battle wouldn’t happen. As for what would happen after that, she hadn’t the faintest idea; but this was what she needed to focus on, as much for the sake of the mission as for her own sanity.

   She tucked her two scrolls away in the pouch at her right hip, then filled the pouch on her left with knives, kunai, and wire. In less than two minutes, she found herself at Sai’s side just outside the east gates. Her mind felt blank.

   Sai only inclined his head in greeting, handing her a map of where they’d be heading to. “It’ll take the rest of the night to get there,” he said monotonously, “even travelling at top speed.”

   She nodded. She’d only worked with him once before, but she’d always appreciated his knack for getting straight to the point. “What’s the plan, then?”

   “I’ll go ahead of you now and leave you with this,” he said, then pulled his giant scroll from his back and, using his unique jutsu, painted out the figure of a large, inky dog that went immediately to her side.

   _How appropriate,_ she thought humorlessly. She had to wonder how much Sai must have researched her.

   “I’ll inform the team of our addition,” he continued, “and you’ll use this dog to communicate to us any information you can. If something happens, it can either inform us of your location or lead you back to me.”

   She nodded again. “I imagine we’ll arrive within an hour of each other.”

   “One and a half,” he corrected her bluntly. “I am much faster than you.”

   She swallowed the urge to take offense at the comment, knowing he only spoke tactically. “Alright, then,” she sighed. “I’ll use that window to start tracking, assuming you send me any leads they’ve gathered once you get there.”

   He nodded in affirmation. “I assume you already have leads of your own, or the Hokage wouldn’t have assigned you to this mission.”

   She smirked a little at the insinuation. “Something like that,” she acquiesced. “I’ll know whether they’re really leads or not once I get there.”

   He nodded again and, seeing that there was nothing more to be said, took off northward. She glanced down at the black and white dog at her side once he’d gone, and the dog looked up at her and barked once.

   “Right,” she muttered, and took off after her teammate.

   Silently she prayed this would work.

* * *

 


	20. The Asking Price

* * *

The forest flew by in greens and browns as Haru leapt from branch to branch, cutting through the snake-like path that Sai had informed her Kakashi’s team had taken the morning before. She was probably half an hour from their general area now, and the sun was beginning to rise again, the increasing light making it far easier for her to dodge the branches overhead.

   Despite the nervous feeling she hadn’t been able to shake all night, there was something almost therapeutic in leaping through the forest on her own – well, mostly on her own, she considered, as she glanced over at the mix of chakra and ink that Sai had formed into a dog close on her heel. But she hadn’t had to worry about making idle conversation or anything of the sort like she usually did when travelling with a team. Instead she’d been able to spend the night focusing on the air flying past her face as she moved, the sound of the leaves blowing in the wind and owls hooting softly in the darkness. It had been a long time since she’d been able to experience the absence of people and the therapeutic calm that nature offered.

   Of course, she was fully aware that this was only the calm before the storm. Even while enjoying her surroundings, she had to make herself sensitive to them as well, feeling around her with her chakra, listening carefully for sounds that would be out of place, watching for movement ahead of her. The closer she got to her destination, the higher the stakes were that she be completely aware of what was around her – even if she was sure that Kakashi’s previous lead must have at least put them in the right general area, it was all too possible that Itachi or Sasuke could have sensed them and adjusted their routes.

   As she got closer to her destination, she figured now was as good a time as any to search around a bit. She activated her Keigan then, and used several hand seals to activate a special Keigan technique that she reserved for more high-stakes missions such as these – something her clan had called _Shitai Sacchi._ Suddenly her surroundings seemed opaque, and duller, less saturated even in the growing light. Below her streaks of color blurred past, mixes of deep reds and light blues that indicated creatures on the forest floor – ahead of her was more of the same: even through layers and layers of trees and foliage could she see pops of color moving about in the distance. But all of them were too small to be anything to concern herself with.

   She had to be much more careful with her vision like this – it was harder to make out edges, harder to see the detail in the trees that would help her land on the right branches as she leapt past. Her head began to throb softly with the strain on both her focus and her ocular muscles.

   She felt rather than saw Sai’s dog moving closer to her, leading her a tad more eastward – it seemed it had sniffed something in the distance. Her eyes flitted from body to body, ignoring everything that looked too small to be significant, and Sai’s dog seemed to lose the scent—

   But then she saw it: a humanoid pop of deep red and light blue forward and to the right. She reached out with her chakra, feeling for their chakra signature in the distance, and as soon as she felt it she deactivated her Keigan. As she drew closer to it, she began to feel just how large the chakra signature was – they had to be a rather powerful shinobi, and yet it wasn’t a signature that felt all that familiar.

   When she was within a mile of it she masked her own chakra as best she could, taking shorter leaps and concentrating hard. There was a clearing up ahead. She slowed and came to a silent stop in the tree line, adjusting her line of sight until she saw him.

   Kisame.

   Her stomach flipped, and immediately she searched the clearing around him for his partner, feeling out with her chakra – but there was nothing. He was alone, walking through the clearing with no hint of haste.

   Yet he definitely had direction – he was heading west with a clear sense of purpose. She watched him pass from her safe distance away from him, her brow furrowed and stomach heavy. What did it mean that he was alone? Did it mean anything? Surely it did – the only times she knew for sure that Kisame was nowhere near Itachi was when Itachi was trying to meet with her—

   She realized two things simultaneously: if Kisame was far enough away from Itachi that she couldn’t detect his partner’s chakra at all, then Itachi had to have made that happen himself – he would not want anyone else to interfere with his endeavor; and, Itachi had been planning on Haru to meet with him again before all this had been set in motion, and he’d given her a means of making that happen.

   With a sudden burst of adrenaline, she headed directly east, the dog still right at her heels, to give Kisame a wide berth. Slowly she began to turn more and more north, heading towards her original destination, but when she was only five minutes from the perimeter on her map, she stopped on the branch of a thick oak, reaching behind her for the two scrolls attached to her waistline at the base of her spine. She removed the slightly smaller of the two, and carefully spread it out before her.

   Itachi had given her a scroll similar to this years ago, when they’d known that they would need to meet but not when her missions would allow her the time. The scroll had a twin that Itachi carried on him, and the two scrolls were linked via a special jutsu using Itachi’s chakra. As soon as she would send the signal on her end with her own chakra, his would automatically signal back to her which direction to head in – the idea was that they would both travel in the direction their scroll indicated until they met in the middle. They’d only used it once before, but it had worked like a charm – although she had gotten lucky in that Itachi hadn’t been preoccupied at the time but rather perfectly available to go through with it.

   This would not be the case this time around, but she wasn’t worried about that. If she was right about this, his and Sasuke’s meeting was happening any time now and he was very likely anticipating that. If she was right, she could use the scroll he’d given her to find out which direction to head in to find him. And – if she was right – the signal he would receive from his twin scroll would put him on guard, and he would take measures to ensure she did not interfere. But the quicker she found him, the quicker she could stop this – it was worth the risk of him making the job harder.

   She concentrated some of her chakra into her hand, and, after a deep breath, placed it in the middle of the scroll’s seal.

   She felt it pulse through the scroll, outward, and then – _there_. A wave of familiar chakra coursed through her body, and she felt it pull her northwest. The pull remained in her veins even after she rolled the scroll back up and reattached it at her waist, and she turned to Sai’s dog, reaching her hand out, still pulsing with chakra, hoping it would be able to feel the pull too. It leaned its head into her hand briefly, then whirled its head in the direction the pull was coming from.

   “Pass that on to Sai,” she said quickly. “Go tell them where to go. I’ll scout the way ahead of them and come back to them myself with what I find.”

   The dog gave a short, quiet bark and took off for its master. As soon as it was gone she followed the pull in her veins, taking her to Itachi. There was no time to lose.

   She traveled as fast as her feet and her chakra could carry her, all the colors of the forest sliding past her and running together into indistinguishable shapes. There was a rushing in her ears she was sure had nothing to do with her surroundings – the faster she ran the more her situation began to truly hit her in waves. There was no pushing the thoughts away anymore. Itachi was planning to die. Itachi was willing to put that blood on his brother’s hands. And Haru had promised him she would never breathe a word of the truth to Sasuke, but the closer she got the more the thought crossed her mind: _at what cost?_

   And yet she knew it wasn’t a decision she could make. She knew that she had no idea what to do. All she really knew was that somehow, she couldn’t let this happen – which she figured was the very reason Itachi had kept this part of his plan a secret from her.

   Her senses spiked. There was a sharp concentration of chakra directly ahead of her. She shot left, meaning to go around whoever or whatever it was – but she felt it mirror her. She leapt towards the oak ahead of her, planted her feet against the bark, and propelled herself to the right, completely perpendicular to her route. It followed her. She pulled a knife from her pouch and focused on the chakra as she continued to move – it was coming closer.

   On the next branch she alighted upon, instead of using it to propel her forward, she used it to flip herself backwards towards the chakra. As she hung upside-down in the air in the middle of her leap, she glimpsed her pursuer a ways back – a blur of black and red that made her stomach flip. But she followed through with her movement, knife at the ready, poised to land right on top of them.

   There was a sharp, resonating clang before she even realized she’d stopped moving. A kunai had met her knife midair, held by a slender hand with a red ring on one finger. As she met his eyes, he sent her flying back from him with his kunai alone and she flipped onto the closest branch, perched with one hand against the bark of the tree. _Sharingan,_ her thoughts whispered in the aftershock.

   Itachi stared back at her from an adjacent tree, perched in such a way that almost mirrored her body.

   She tried to regain her breath to voice her shock but the adrenaline had her heart clenching in a painful way. She hadn’t expected to meet him in the middle of the forest – she hadn’t even recognized the chakra, although now she could feel the familiar tinge of it in her core. And yet she was struggling to remember why she hadn’t expected him—

   “It would have taken you the entire night to come this far from Konoha,” Itachi said bluntly. His face was a blank slate. “But you used my scroll only just now.”

   It hit her hard. The concentration of chakra she’d felt – radiating from the body in front of her – had popped into existence as she’d been running, where normally she would have felt the presence grow gradually as it approached. And, more importantly – the pull from the scroll he’d given her was still there. And it was pulling her far to the left of the Itachi in front of her.

   She was staring at a clone.

   Itachi’s clone stood, balancing gracefully on the branch. “It’s not safe for you to be here, Chiharu.”

   “Because of you,” she breathed.

   His eyes softened, but only slightly. “Yes,” he conceded, his tone almost ironic. “Because of me.”

   “Why are you doing this?” she said louder, standing from the branch, still bracing herself against the bark. She didn’t trust her balance right now. “You could’ve come to me years ago—“

   “There is no other reality than this,” he interrupted. “We were both set upon these paths. There is no changing them, and no point in wishing we had been set on different ones.”

   “You’re wrong,” she bit out. She felt her eyes tearing up but she blinked it away. “We did this all ourselves. We made those choices _ourselves_.”

   “Either way,” he said softly, “this is our reality now. You worry too much about what could have been.”

   She growled and launched herself at him. She expected the metallic resistance against her knife this time, but she was satisfied enough that the force of her impact had pushed him off the branch. They landed on the forest floor, metal pushing against metal, Itachi’s other hand holding the wrist of her left. She glared into his eyes.

   “I would ask you to turn back,” he said, his smooth baritone reverberating in her ears. “But I know you too well, Haru.”

   _He won’t let you stop him_ , she thought, and then she understood. Her eyes scanned his face, looking anywhere but his eyes now, knowing what he was trying to do.

   In the blink of an eye, he disarmed her with his kunai before throwing it away, grabbing both of her wrists in his left hand. She pulled back from him with all her strength but even his clone was stronger than her, and she could feel her wrists bruising at the resistance. His right hand came to her jaw, moving her face firmly towards his.

   “I’m only sorry that it ends with this,” he muttered.

   She tried to shake her head at him but his grip was too strong. The tears sprung back into her eyes.

   He whispered something even quieter, echoing from across the years, almost too low to catch it. But she heard him. And in a moment of weakness she met his eyes in shock.

   Everything went red and black.

* * *

 


	21. Black the Sun

_The moon was barely a sliver of white light through the black canopy of trees, casting the two shinobi in a darkness they’d grown well accustomed to. Tomorrow night would be even darker still, they knew, as the new moon would blacken the land. The timing was rather ideal._

_The male shinobi signaled for his companion to come closer as they leapt through the trees, then nodded south, eyes glinting red with the movement. She nodded back and they altered their route slightly to head towards the spot he’d found._

_They landed silently in the grass next to a large willow tree – the only willow they’d seen in the forest so far. The space next to the tree was more than large enough for two sleeping bags and a small fire, and the tree was distinctive enough for either of them that they’d be able to find their way back. The red-eyed shinobi began to walk a perimeter, and she listened to the near-silent rustle as he performed the hand seals for a familiar genjutsu. They’d be hidden from any possible (and unlikely) passerby._

_When he returned, nodding to signify the success of his jutsu, the two shinobi removed their ANBU masks, leaning them against the twisted base of the willow tree. The black-haired shinobi gathered wood for the fire, lighting it with a Katon jutsu, his red eyes now black; his brunette companion set up their sleeping bags while he worked._

_Haru sat down on top of her sleeping bag with a quiet sigh, staring into the glowing embers of the fire. Itachi sat down next to her, joining her on her sleeping bag instead of going to his own. They sat in pensive silence for a long while. The air was heavy around them._

_“We should discuss a plan,” she said quietly. She felt small sitting next to him._

_He only nodded, his eyes on the fire. They had completed a week-long mission in three days’ time, just as they’d planned to – it wasn’t an easy mission, but they’d fought and trained together too many times for a retrieval mission like this one to be truly difficult for them. The Hokage had known this, too._

_Haru wrapped her arms around her knees as she watched the flames dance. “Tomorrow night,” she whispered._

_Itachi finally moved his gaze from the fire to her. She didn’t have to meet his eyes to know his brow had creased. “Not together,” he argued._

_Her mouth twisted. “No, I guess not,” she said quietly. “…It just depends…”_

_He shook his head at her. “I am to exile myself,” he said. The lack of emotion in his tone betrayed his excess of feeling. “But you… the nature of your mission grants you a better option than that. And that’s an option you must take. If both of our missions were to happen on the same night, either I would be blamed for both and you would be sent to kill me, or all would be suspicious of your involvement and you would likely be disconnected from Konoha, the same as me.”_

_Her hands clenched on her forearms. She looked at him at last, meeting his solemn gaze with her own. “Danzou will likely send someone to kill you anyways, Itachi. Better me than anyone else. I could… I could try to—“_

_“No,” he said with finality. He looked infinitely older than thirteen. “There will have to be a few days in between. Besides… given how it all must be done, it wouldn’t make sense any other way.”_

_She moved her gaze back to the fire. He was right. He was always right – but this time she wished with all her being that he didn’t have to be. The only way to kill a Tanade was all at once – so they had no chance of reversing the damage – and there was no justifying why a shinobi might massacre one clan and then merely set another aflame. The motives had to be different to minimize the chance of suspicion. “I’ll finish my mission first,” she said, barely above a whisper._

_Itachi continued to stare at her. This time, she could feel his concern radiating off of him, as if he wished for no more than to hold her, to comfort her somehow._

_“If the Uchiha are killed first,” she said, “there will be an uprising among the Tanade, and their numbers will overwhelm – they’ll use the festival as an excuse to make a battle plan of their own, leaving the Uchiha’s plan behind. But if the Tanade are killed first… the Uchiha will have their suspicions, but they are less likely to act before the planned coup. That’ll make it easier for you.”_

_He considered her for a moment, then nodded, finding her plan sound. “…I can use it as a catalyst. Say it inspired me to act.”_

_Her nails began to dig into her arms, but she nodded in agreement. She was trying hard to push thoughts out of her mind – doubts, wishes, hopes, desperations. It was far too late for this to go any other way than the way they would push it. The alternative was unacceptable._

_“…There are children,” he whispered, and her gaze swung to him again even as he stared only into the fire. There was pain breaking through his blank mask, and it made her want to cry, to smash her own mask into thousands of pieces. “Your clan. A dozen have been born since we have.”_

_She swallowed around the knot in her throat. “You’ve seen them,” she replied. “The way we’re all trained. What we’re taught to believe. I didn’t even get the worst of it, Itachi – after me, after the War, they were raised to distrust the village, and those raised outside of Konoha were taught to hate it. Those children would volunteer to be on the frontlines for a coup.”_

_“…They don’t know any better,” he replied. If she didn’t know him as well as she did she would have thought he was begging. But even despite the pain bleeding into his features, she knew he would have convinced her to go through with it no matter what. Thousands would die if they didn’t, hundreds of thousands, war would break out – only two hundred would die if they did._

_All the same, she couldn’t keep the tears from spilling any longer, no matter how calm she thought she’d been. “My clan is a stranger to me,” she whispered, and closed her eyes to all of it. “But… Itachi… what about Sasuke?”_

_She heard him move beside her, and she opened her eyes. He’d run his hands over his face, breathing deeply, before returning to his perfect posture. There were tears in his eyes as well. “I can’t.”_

_She stared at him._

_“…Sasuke is innocent,” he whispered. “He knows nothing. I can’t…”_

_He couldn’t even say the words. In a rush, she stood from the sleeping bag, whirled at the willow tree behind them and lashed out in a muffled yell. She prayed to any gods above that all of this would just end, that the Uchiha unmake their plans, that the Tanade remove themselves from their hyper-conservative beliefs and undo all the horrors. She wished the Elders had found another way, anything but this. That they’d found time. That there was any time left to prevent all this violence._

_But that was not their reality. They had run out of time for any other options, and kami, had they tried. The reality was that the date had been set for Uchiha’s coup and that Tanade would follow them into the fray. The reality was that if the coup succeeded and the Sandaime was assassinated, Konoha’s enemies would take advantage of the chaos to attack. The reality was war._

_And the solution left to these two teenagers was familial genocide. Exile for Itachi. A lifetime of lies. Pretending innocence, for Haru. Lies and more lies. Covering up Konoha’s dark secrets and silenced violence. Indefinite separation from each other. And for Sasuke – to believe his brother had massacred their clan in cold blood—_

_Before she could fall against the bark of the tree, Itachi was already at her side, his arms around her firmly to keep her standing. He guided her away from the tree and back towards the fire, where he lifted her scuffed hands to the light once they were seated again on her sleeping bag. The proximity was comforting, but she refused to heal the small scratches on her knuckles like he was implicitly asking her to do. He lowered their hands and kept his gaze steady on hers. Tear-filled eyes met the same._

_“You will have to do it alone,” he said bluntly. He had to finish the conversation now. Get it out of the way. They needed to prepare. “Go in during the new moon tomorrow night and make sure you’re not seen. Sneak back to camp, and at dawn, once the smoke is rising high enough in the light, you’ll go back and make sure they see you entering.”_

_She nodded. She would pretend to have seen the smoke and run ahead of him on their way back from the mission, and then she would mourn where they all could see her. She could drop the mask temporarily to convince them._

_“I won’t be able to see you again after that, I don’t think,” he continued, and she felt her chest tighten. “You’ll be mourning, and they will expect you to want privacy, even from me. And the more I isolate myself, the more my actions will make sense to them.”_

_She remained silent._

_He squeezed her hands – he hadn’t let go. “Once I’ve become missing-nin, I’ll need you as my connection to the village,” he said, almost comfortingly despite the similar emotions to hers that his voice was betraying. “You and I will threaten the Elders to keep Sasuke safe, and… and to make sure none of them ever tell Sasuke the truth. I’ll threaten them myself to keep you safe as well.”_

_“Wait— what do you mean? About Sasuke?”_

_His hands shifted around hers, cradling her minor wounds. “The entire village must believe I killed my clan for power, not as an order,” he said patiently. “That includes Sasuke. He can’t keep that secret himself. And besides – he should – no, he_ needs _to believe in what Konoha was founded upon. He needs to believe that peace among shinobi is possible. Even if he must hate me in order to do so. It’s the only way for me to give him a chance to pursue a happy life.”_

_“Happy?” she gasped, clenching her hands around his too hard. “Hatred is not happiness—“_

_“It’s either hatred for me, or hatred for the village. I will not bring him into exile with me, I can’t leave him in the village and expect him to keep my secret, and I won’t let him grow up believing Konoha evil. I can handle his hatred, and I know his hatred for me can eventually be sated. This is the only way.”_

_“But if you just explained—“_

_Itachi shook his head, and his eyes were overcome with sadness, as if he could no longer hold it back. As if every one of her arguments were ones he’d fought with himself over already. “He’s too young,” he whispered. “Haru… I need you to promise me you will help me with this. That you’ll help my brother… after this is over.”_

_She held back a sob. It was too late – and he was right; this was the only option left. “Okay,” she said. “I promise.”_

_He nodded. Their hands relaxed._

_“We… Can we…” she whispered, unsure how to say it._

_He listened patiently still, his eyes gentle. The masks were long gone._

_“…We should say our goodbyes,” she breathed. “In case something happens, and we never see each other again.”_

_“But we will,” he said. “I told you I’ll need you.”_

_She shook her head. “I know,” she pleaded quietly, “but you’ll be out in the middle of nowhere, a missing-nin – I’ll still be ANBU – anything could happen between this mission and the next. …I want to say our goodbyes now, even if I’ll still see you in the morning, just so I can know we said them.”_

_“…Very well,” he muttered. He searched her eyes for a long moment, listening as she forced her breathing to go back to normal. “I…”_

_But suddenly her shoulder was smothering his words. She buried her face into the crook of his neck, her arms wrapped around him. He held her back, forcing himself to relax into one of the few embraces he’d known in his thirteen years._

_She was whispering against his neck, her arms pulling him ever closer._

_“…I’ll always love you.”_

* * *

 

_The words were reverberating in her head, in his voice as well as hers. She heard too much at once. She couldn’t tell where his voice ended and hers began._

_Everything was spiraling in blacks and reds, and then suddenly everything ended too quickly._

* * *

 

Tree branches swayed gently above her, rays of sunlight shifting back and forth through the leaves. Her head was aching. It took her a moment to remember why.

   She sat up quickly, regretting it instantly as the pressure in her head increased. She winced and drew healing chakra into her hand before placing it over her forehead, relieving the pain without risking her kekkei genkai making it worse. When the throbbing faded she looked about her surroundings.

   There was no sign of Itachi’s clone.

   She stood and looked to the sun’s position – only a few hours had passed since he’d forced her into his Tsukuyomi. She felt a chill run down her spine. Why had he ended the genjutsu there? Where had his clone gone? And why did she no longer feel the pull from her scroll…?

   There was no chakra anywhere around her. If she had to guess, he must have released his clone jutsu. If he was trying to distract her—

   With a surge of adrenaline, she leapt up into the tree line, jumping to the top of the tallest tree near her. She could activate _Shitai Sacchi_ again, use her vantage point to figure out which direction to head in – perhaps Kakashi and his team had made it there before her, perhaps they had succeeded—

   It became clear very quickly that she wouldn’t need her Keigan to know where to head. Her breath caught in her throat. She knew instinctually just from the sight of it what it had to mean.

   There was a thick column of smoke rising in the distance, and beneath it, black fire just on the edge of the horizon. _Amaterasu_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry for the delay on this one! It was a crazy weekend; I swear I wasn't trying to drag out the cliffhanger lol. And then here I leave you with another one...
> 
> Thank you so much for reading, as always. I'm so glad you're all enjoying the story so far!


	22. Dissenter

* * *

She was leaping through the trees before she’d even thought to move.

   The pull was gone. That was her only thought now. Not that she needed it anymore to find him – the fire in the distance was direction enough – but for what it meant that the jutsu his chakra had created, the scrolls his chakra was permeated with, were no longer working. _Maybe his scroll was destroyed,_ she thought, hoping against hope. _If not—_

   She couldn’t finish the thought. Regardless she wouldn’t let it be so. Itachi had to live.

   The fire was still miles away, the smoke rising and mingling with the overhead clouds, and frustration was rising within her that she couldn’t reach it fast enough. Amaterasu was not a technique to be used lightly for how unquenchable and inextinguishable the flames were, how tenaciously they raged over whatever they touched. If Itachi had resorted to it – even if he had resorted to using his Mangekyou Sharingan – it meant he’d had no other choice, for one reason or another. It meant Sasuke had indeed been strong enough to match him, that, possibly, he too had gained the Mangekyou.

   She shuddered as she soared through the air again, leaping as far as she possibly could. Perhaps he hadn’t gained it – she didn’t want to imagine the level of trauma he would have to endure to have done so. It had taken Uchiha Shisui’s suicide for Itachi’s to awaken. But Sasuke had no one that close to him – except…

   Haru shook her head, propelling herself off a tree branch with much more vigor than necessary. She was getting closer to the fire, but still it was too far. Perhaps only a mile or two was left. As she got closer, she saw the clouds ahead of her darkening, growing, as if it were about to storm.

   Her eyes widened as they returned to the flames beneath the clouds. They were shrinking. Itachi was releasing the technique – why? Of course she knew his intentions weren’t to hurt Sasuke, but in Sasuke’s perspective Itachi would have no reason to extinguish the flames, and Itachi would want to uphold that façade. Everything was for Sasuke – every masked action designed to lead him on the path the elder Uchiha wanted for him, even after he was gone.

   He had told her this nearly from the beginning – she had promised to protect his brother and that included protecting him even from the truth. He had made her promise that even if he were to die, she would continue the façade for him, ensure that Sasuke find happiness after revenge. But he had never told her that he truly intended for Sasuke to succeed in exacting that revenge. Somehow she felt she should have known.

   She swallowed with difficulty and kept her eyes trained on the diminishing flames, making absolutely sure she was headed in their direction even if they went completely out. If only she had time to be angry at him for leaving out that part of his plan. If it came to fruition, she wasn’t sure what she would do – or what would happen as a result of it all. Itachi was Konoha’s only link to Akatsuki and by extension, to Akatsuki’s leaders – not to mention the only true threat to Konoha’s elders (more specifically Danzou) should they move against Sasuke or even Haru. Without him…

   Without him, life would go on. But he was the only one besides Konoha’s leaders who knew anything about what she’d done, and he was the only one who truly, wholly knew her. What they had been through, the things they both had seen and the things they had confessed to each other – not even Kakashi knew so much. For as long as she could remember, Itachi had been a part of her life. Indeed, the earliest memory she could recall was huddling with Itachi and his mother in the cellar of the house they’d been living in before the Nine-Tails attack, waiting for an ally to come and tell them it was safe to come out again, another night spent waiting for the end of the Third Shinobi World War. She remembered Mikoto trying to shield their eyes from the horrors outside, turning them away from the windows, and she remembered sharing a look with Itachi, the first time they’d learned to communicate nonverbally. They had both already seen too much of what Mikoto tried to hide from them. Haru remembered the War just as well as she knew Itachi did, without ever having to fight in it.

   Theirs was a bond unique to them and them alone. As much as she loved the friends she’d gained after him, their relationship would always be the strongest of them. That was the reality she knew. The reality she didn’t know, the one that loomed over her thoughts now, rising on the horizon ahead, was a life without that bond. A life severed from his, separated by the one true enemy of all shinobi: death. Her life would continue on without his but she was terrified to imagine what that kind of life would entail – terrified to reevaluate all the hopes and plans she’d had for her future and what it all would mean for her village. If Akatsuki planned war, and their one friend in Akatsuki was gone—

   She could see only death in her future. And it was so far from what she and Itachi had set out to do in the beginning, so far from both of their desires for the world, for themselves, that she found herself unable to hope any longer, and unable to wish for a better end.

   It was raining half a mile ahead of her, and as she flew closer to her destination, the flames that had marked her target long extinguished, she began to feel the thick humidity in the air and the small droplets of water that hit her face. Her skin felt cold, but she couldn’t tell if it was because of the moisture hitting her or from the blood that she’d felt drain from her face. She was frightened of what was ahead of her and she knew it.

   Yet she found herself hoping, strangely, that Kakashi’s team hadn’t reached the battle. Itachi would have done everything in his power to ensure the fight wasn’t interrupted, and she was wary of what the ensuing desperation would do to any of them, Itachi included. His intentions, she knew, would never be to hurt them, but all the same…

   Her hair was soaked already. She was close enough to the area she’d spotted that she needed to keep an eye out, to make sure she missed nothing. There was no way of knowing if she was looking for a spot in the forest, a clearing, perhaps a building of some sort—

   Then it was there – the pull from the scroll. It was faint, almost faint enough that she didn’t catch it, but it was there, leading her forward. She continued at top speed, paying acute attention to the feeling as it increased with each leap, her heart thundering in her chest and hands shivering from the cold the rain brought on.

  She saw the structures then – rounded, conical earthen structures emerging from the ground, ringed with trees all the way to their peaks, marking some sort of complex she didn’t recognize. Perhaps she would have if the complex still existed. Between the earthen structures was an immense pile of rubble, as if a huge building had completely imploded. As she drew closer she began to see traces of Amaterasu, small black flames fizzling out one by one on the trees, the ground, the rubble that had reached that far out from the original building. She was careful not to touch any of it.

   Several streaks of lightning struck the rubble ahead of her, and then there came the sharp, rumbling thunder as the rain grew heavier and the color drained from her surroundings. The mountains in the distance took up the horizon, and soon she could hear the rain pattering against the excess of rubble. She kept her eyes sharp. This was their battleground. She could feel the energy in the air, ghosts of their chakra lingering behind from their jutsu, sparking the lightning in the storm above. Another slim bolt struck the farthest edge of the rubble, and then she felt more than she heard the deep rumble of thunder move outwards. Her boots struck the rubble at last and she forced herself to slow down for how slick and unsteady it was, focusing more chakra to her feet to keep herself from slipping.

   A few pieces of the rubble were marked – by what, she couldn’t yet tell. Some simplistic carving that had been painted over in red and white. Other pieces had kanji, something that looked like a blessing or a prayer, and more complicated lines that may have been historical writing – all of it flew by in glimpses and blurs, a contrast against the stone marked occasionally by red and white.

   Then she saw it – a larger slab of perhaps a wall, directly ahead of her. The symbol on it was unmistakable, and she wondered how she hadn’t put the colors and shapes together before. The Uchiha fan – the clan’s famous crest. Red for blood, for Sharingan. White for purity.

   She stopped suddenly and ducked behind a larger piece of rubble. There had been something whitish emerging from the top of the pillar, and as she peaked around her hiding spot a good distance from where her body was pulling her, she saw the thing form into a familiar shape. A plant-like, flytrap type shinobi with a split black and white body that matched his split personality – she’d learned long ago his name was Zetsu. Beneath him were two figures lying still on the ground that she hadn’t noticed before. She held a hand to her chest, attempting unsuccessfully to quell the thunderous beating within.

   “…Sasuke won,” she heard him say. There was a brief silence in which she knew his other half was speaking to him. “…Itachi should have been much stronger than this. The way he was moving was strange… and you even said something seemed wrong with him, remember? …From overusing the Sharingan, you mean? …Hm. And he was so close to getting Sasuke’s eyes, too. A shame.”

   Zetsu began to almost melt back into the rubble, she assumed to report what he’d found. He’d been watching the entire fight, apparently, and she knew it was for a reason, under someone’s order. Now was her chance, as soon as he was gone—

   She counted to three once he’d disappeared, just in case, then leapt immediately from her hiding place, following the pull again to the Uchiha fan it led her to – to the bodies beneath the crest.

   She landed with a splash, soaked down to her bones by the rain. At her feet were two of the last Uchiha on earth – Itachi to her left, and Sasuke to her right. Both of them were bloody, beaten, their clothes torn and faces soaked. The rain was working to wash the blood away into puddles beneath their limbs and heads.

   Haru went to Sasuke first, checking that he was still breathing, that he would be okay, suddenly too aware of the fact that Zetsu and whoever he was working with (she had a good guess who) could be back at any moment. Sasuke must have collapsed from exhaustion, but his vitals were fine as she knew they’d be. The blood running down his face from his forehead strangely wasn’t his. She turned to his older brother.

   He lay opposite to Sasuke, his head towards his brother’s feet. She moved up his body, noting the blood around his hand, the gash in his left thigh, the marks up his arm, the blood streaking down his chin from his mouth, and his eyes – staring up to the sky, unseeing, no longer black but a pale charcoal grey. She activated her Keigan.

   The disease had taken over his organs, and he was almost completely blind. His heart—

   She exhaled a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding.

   His heart was beating. Faintly. Slowly. But beating. Relief flooded her followed shortly by adrenaline and near-panic. She had to do something. Akatsuki would be back any second, she knew, to collect them – why else would Zetsu be involved? She had to do _something_ – but this was his plan all along, his desire – and yet—

   He had been wrong.

   There was no choice but this.  

   Immediately she rolled him to his side so that he faced her, dipping her torso towards him, and lifted him onto her shoulder from her crouch, focusing more chakra into her hands and feet. She then focused her Keigan and made one-handed seals, replacing his body with a complicated genjutsu that she knew nearly halved her chakra and made her eyes bloodshot; if the jutsu had been placed well enough, it wouldn’t dispel for at least a week. She glanced down at Sasuke one more time – _he will live, he will be happy, that is all I promised you_ – and took off into the forest as fast as she could with now more than double her weight. She kept both hands on him, glowing green from the healing chakra she was supplying him. It was all she could do until they were a safe enough distance away, somewhere, somehow, that no one could find them.

_“We were both set upon these paths. There is no changing them, and no point in wishing we had been set on different ones. …This is our reality now.”_

   _Change is a decision,_ she thought. She knew that now – perhaps had known it all along. Every conversation they had had about the paths they hadn’t chosen, about perception and the truth of reality – and she wasn’t sure he’d ever realized, or had wanted to, at least.

   His careful plan was now Sasuke’s reality. Sasuke had hated him, grown stronger for years, sought power, and then killed him and avenged the clan his brother had exterminated. Now he lay amongst the rubble of Itachi’s design. That was _his_ reality.

   But it didn’t have to be theirs.

* * *

 


	23. Interlude/Far From Home

Interlude

 

_To the Godaime Hokage Tsunade,_

_I have ensured that Team Kakashi will return safely to Konoha as my mission asked of me, to the best of my abilities. However, I must break my promise to you: I don’t know that I can return to Konoha with them. My loyalties still lie with you and the village but my priorities within that scope have shifted. The easiest course of action for you would be to declare me missing-nin. And I encourage it._

_I am sorry, Tsunade-sama. I think you understand._

_Tanade Chiharu_

* * *

 

Chapter 23

“Far From Home”

 

The sun was swelteringly hot at its zenith in the sky, but it wouldn’t be long before the freezing night would take over.

   The journey to Sunagakure was never an easy feat for that reason alone, and nor was it an entertaining one once nearer to the border. The transition from lush, green forest to arid, white sand certainly had a sort of beauty to it, but after making the journey so often, it had lost its luster fairly quickly over the years. At least the work on the other end of the journey would be interesting.

   Himura Itsume was never one to refuse the promise of interesting medical work, no matter what journey she had to endure to get to it. She liked to think of these missions more as pilgrimages than anything else – travelling for days, sometimes weeks at a time to reach an honored location in which she could enrich herself, and pay homage to those she considered greater than herself. Not that she was particularly spiritual. But, in a way, the medical field was sacred to her.

   She was surprised, however, that she’d been assigned this research mission in the first place considering all the chaos brewing at home. She didn’t like to dwell too much on the violence she’d seen, but she couldn’t help but worry that she hadn’t seen the end of it. The hospital wasn’t really a good medium for gossip, so she wasn’t sure exactly what the rest of the village thought was looming in their future. But from what she’d overheard from patients and nurses alike, it wouldn’t be good – and the hospital would find likely itself very busy, very soon.

   Suna was fast approaching. The dune-like wall with its impossibly tall entrance were a far more welcoming sight to Itsume than it would have been to most other shinobi, thanks in no small part to the sweltering, dragging day she’d had. A guard ninja met her halfway down the road, and she pulled her hood back and her face covering down, checking simultaneously that the hitai-ate tied around her hips was visible.

   “Leaf shinobi,” the guard greeted brusquely once he was within speaking distance, “please state your intent.”

   She pulled a scroll from her backpack with the Konoha seal on it and held it out for him. “My name is Himura Itsume,” she answered. “I’m here on request of Konohagakure’s Elder Council to work with Sunagakure’s medical staff on some important research.”

   “I see,” he grunted, glancing over the scroll before handing it back to her. “Himura, eh? I’ve heard that name before.”

   She nodded. “I have family here,” she explained in brief. Only an aunt and uncle who looked nothing like her still lived in Suna, and she knew their family name was only recognized from her grandparents’ time spent on Suna’s Elder Council. The rest of her family had passed quickly into obscurity after the War.

   “Very well,” he said. “Follow me.”

   The medic did as he asked, tucking the scroll beneath her thin layers of clothing for quicker access. She followed him through the entrance, where two more guard ninja were stationed who didn’t even glance in her direction.

   The village must have been fairly wary regarding recent events, she figured. There were more guards stationed all along the walkway into the village, and two more standing by the inner side of the entrance. Unlike the guards, the citizens all immediately watched her as she passed between the rounded, sandy buildings of Suna, and while they didn’t seem particularly suspicious of her, the action wasn’t exactly trusting either. It didn’t help that her hair stood out like a sore thumb in this country, a pop of bright blond amidst a sea of sandy brown and muted brunette, making it far too easy to draw attention to herself.

   She glanced at the guard still leading her into the village. _Is he really going to escort me the whole way?_ she thought. _What harm is a chuunin medic going to do to a heavily populated, self-defending village in the middle of a desert?_

   Soon enough, they’d made it to Suna’s massive hospital, the surly guard ninja finally parting ways with her after waving her inside without another word. She’d visited this hospital frequently enough in the past that she knew her way to the main research area without having to look at the directory, and after a couple minutes she’d made it to the head researcher’s office on the second floor of the basement. She knocked three times on the doorframe before she entered.

   “Hello, Nishimura-san,” she greeted with a smile, pulling the missive scroll from her clothing.

   “Himura!” Nishimura Suki, an older, severe-looking woman greeted her in return, standing from behind her neatly ordered desk. She took the scroll from the younger medic’s hands, reading over it quickly. “Ah. Yes, I suppose I should’ve expected they would send you about this.”

   Itsume nodded dismissively. “They did send me here for the last coma case we had, after all,” she said, thinking of her last visit only two months ago. She frowned slightly at the thought – it probably wasn’t a good idea to mention her involvement with that shinobi, even if her patient hadn’t been a criminal at the time.

   Nishimura snorted darkly. “This is a hundred times more important, Himura,” she replied, shaking her head. “Surely you’re worried about your kage?”

   “Concerned, yes,” Itsume conceded. “But there’s no need to worry. I’m fairly confident we can get her up and moving in no time.” She was aware the older woman in front of her was likely put off by her seemingly flippant responses, but Itsume was nothing if not honest. The Hokage was resilient, and Itsume trusted her own skills enough to be able to help her successfully.

   Nishimura led her into the main labs and set her up with a team of medics who were experienced in the things Itsume’s mission required. They worked efficiently for hours, a few of the medics searching through old tomes and scrolls to gather information, Itsume and another running tests on machines that Konoha didn’t have in its hospital, and a few other medics divulging similar cases they had worked on and compiling their notes. As soon as she began to see a correlation between the tests and the research and the situation back at home, she found herself wondering if perhaps their quick progress was good reason to believe that she was missing something.

   She asked a couple members of her team to look up some seemingly unrelated cases: extreme chakra exhaustion that specifically did not end in a coma, slug-related healing processes, the effects of large-area healing ninjutsu. She just had a feeling that things couldn’t be so simple as what they were finding so far – after all, this was no average shinobi they were dealing with.

   Despite the team’s frustration at Itsume’s requests dragging out their work, it only took a couple days more before Itsume figured they had found all they could. To make sure she wasn’t relying too much on her limited perspective of her mission, she asked her team what they believed should be her next steps.

   “As I mentioned yesterday,” said one of the more seasoned researchers, “I believe those rare herbs found in your country are more than worth investigating. In any case, more localized solutions like that would at least help return her to full health even if they don’t do anything for the coma.”

   Itsume nodded. She’d figured as well that that would be her best bet.

   “But we did find those herbs to be successful in revitalizing patients in similar cases,” said another medic. “You did copy down the solution I refer to…?”

   “Of course I did,” Itsume replied. “But there was the fact that the solution isn’t technically legalized in Konoha yet.” _Not that that really matters,_ she thought with a smirk.

   “There is also the jutsu we found,” said another. “The one based in Tea Country. It’s near enough where the herbs are known to be found that it will be worth looking into, I think.”

   Itsume nodded when she saw that no one else had a plan to offer. There were a couple more things worth checking out that they had come across, she thought, but the herbs in the peninsula and the jutsu farther south in Tea were certainly her best bets. She only wished the journey wouldn’t be so long. To reach the peninsula from Suna would take three days of chakra-enhanced travel at the least, and at most she wouldn’t be back in Konoha for another week and a half, maybe even two weeks.

   She sighed. “Well, thank you all for working with me anyways,” she addressed the group. “This is the most we can do unless more developments pop up. I’ll be setting out for Fire in the morning, so if any of you have anything else to offer before then, I’ll be in the hostel nearby.”

   As they dispersed, she tucked her research back into her backpack and wrote a note thanking Nishimura for the use of her facilities. She had a long journey ahead of her and she was looking forward to a full night’s rest before she would head out at dawn. She’d learned a lot, at least, from her Suna team, and she could only hope that good fortune would follow her into the southernmost point of the Land of Fire.

   She sighed and ran her hands through her short hair as she slung her backpack over her shoulder. Tea would be hotter than Suna, she knew, and worse – horribly humid. No amount of layering would save her from the heat this trip. It had better be worth it.

* * *

 


	24. Reclusion

 

* * *

_“What was Sasuke so excited about?”_

_Itachi looked up from where he’d been staring down at the streets of Konoha. Chiharu was walking across the roof towards him, a small paper bag in her arms. “Hm?”_

_“You didn’t notice?” she asked as she sat down next to him._

_He turned back to Konoha. They sat atop a four-story apartment building in the south side of the village; the unique vantage point made it a favorite of Itachi’s. Far to his left was the Hokage Monument and Hokage Mansion, and far on his right was the Uchiha compound in the furthest corner away from the village’s political center. In between these two points was the Academy in the north side of the village, the Konoha Police Force building run by his clan, the main shop street that ran through the center of the village, and the Tanade House closer to the compound. There were memories all around him._

_He glanced back at Chiharu, realizing that she was still waiting for him to respond, a kind yet slightly concerned look on her face. “I haven’t seen Sasuke yet today,” he muttered finally._

_She smiled hesitantly “I won’t keep you too long then,” she replied. “I imagine he’ll want to show you whatever it is he’s excited about. But for now… I brought us something.”_

_He raised a brow at her, watching as she rustled inside the paper bag in her lap._

_She pulled out two sticks of dango, and held one out to him with a smile. “I half-suspected my parents to pop in on me out of nowhere while I was paying for these,” she chuckled. “Hopefully it was worth the trouble.”_

_He reached out to take his from her. It was impossible not to brush his fingers against hers as he did so with how short the sticks were, and he noted the faint blush on her cheeks as he pulled his hand back. “You’ll get in a lot more trouble for this than I will,” he said in concern._

_“They told me to go out and meditate today,” she said, then took a small bite of her treat. “Usually that means no training – if I head back late enough they won’t care to check.”_

_He wasn’t sure how sound her plan really was, but he couldn’t complain too much. It had been a long time since he’d had dango – after his entrance into the ANBU black ops, his parents had been much more severe in their ban of sweets. He shook his head at the thought of them and took a bite. The taste was just as delicious as he’d remembered it._

_They ate in silence for a while, looking out at their village in the twilight. Haru resisted the urge to look at her friend again, knowing she was probably overthinking his thoughtful demeanor. She’d found him on this rooftop plenty of times before, usually when he needed time to think after a particularly difficult mission. Oftentimes she would join him, sometimes she would comfort him. Today she’d just wanted to treat him – a random kindness they’d both come to expect out of each other in their friendship, a way to use their unique bond to keep each other sane._

_They’d both been busy enough lately on missions with other teams that a treat like this was more than welcome. In fact, she’d hardly seen him over the last two weeks for how busy they were – for most of her ANBU missions Itachi was on her team, or was her team Captain as of the last year. Their teamwork was impeccable by anyone’s standards, and every mission they’d ever done together had been successful. In the last several weeks, though, she hadn’t been assigned to his team at all, but Hatake Kakashi’s. She glanced over at Itachi. He hadn’t seemed happy about the arrangement either._

_He met her gaze once he’d finished his dango. “…Thank you,” he said quietly._

_Haru blushed lightly again. She wasn’t sure why, but the sincerity in his tone and something in the way he was looking at her had her flustered. She wondered if it was the sugar. “Of course,” she replied, and took the last bite of hers before taking the dango stick from him to dispose of it. As his shoulder moved to meet her movement, she noticed something glinting under his shirt._

_His hand followed her gaze absent-mindedly. He’d forgotten he was wearing it, but he pulled it from beneath his shirt to allow her a better look._

_“Where is that from?” she asked, watching it glint in the dying light. “I’ve never seen you wear jewelry before.”_

_“I’ve had it for a while,” he said vaguely, distracted as he watched her examine it._

_It was a simple necklace, three circular charms attached equidistantly along a smooth, silver chain. She noted its high quality, then looked up at its wearer, who was already staring at her. “What is it?” she asked him._

_His fingers closed around each charm one by one, as if counting that all three were indeed there, and his gaze moved back towards the village. The hand that wasn’t on his necklace brushed over hers that rested on the gravel of the rooftop. His skin moved against hers as if unconsciously, and she blushed again while she watched him contemplate his answer._

_After a long moment, he told her: “A reminder.”_

* * *

 

The wind through the trees overhead competed with the rush of the small stream below, a symphony of white noise broken up only by the calls of birds in the distance. Pebbles glistened in the breaks of sunlight on the banks of the stream, making the morning light seem strangely brighter. There was a scent of wildflowers on the breeze that mixed refreshingly with the clean scent of the vegetables in the basket.

   It was the first warm morning they’d had in a week, and the green-eyed kunoichi kneeling in the stream couldn’t help but feel comforted by the traces of spring returning to the forest. She hadn’t realized how much she’d missed the sounds of birds and the smell of wildflowers, and she welcomed the sense of calm her surroundings cast around her shoulders. It had been a long time since she’d felt able to relax at all.

   Haru sighed contentedly as she picked up the last cabbage from the pile behind her, then began to gently wash it in the stream. She counted herself lucky to have found such a fertile area – even within the perimeter she’d set, she’d found natural croppings of cabbage, spinach, yams, carrots, even leeks and nasu; not to mention berry bushes and a large plum tree on the eastern edge of the perimeter. She’d only rarely been so far south, but the climate here was so much nicer than the rest of the country.

   She set the cabbage down in the basket to her right, regarding her harvest pensively. She’d have to go hunting soon, probably tomorrow, she figured. There were only a couple rabbits and one pheasant left in the natural fridge she’d made, and those would be gone by the end of the day. She almost dreaded the inevitability of having to feed more than just herself, as it would take twice as long to gather all the food necessary to nourish an additional person. And there was no telling when that change would take place.

   A leaf fell from a tree above into her basket of produce as the wind picked up, and she plucked it out before she stood from the stream. She began the walk back to the small cabin at the center of her perimeter, basket cradled in her arms. She’d have to do a perimeter check tomorrow as well, she added to the to-do list in her head. Hopefully she’d have enough chakra to get everything done.

   The cabin was small, mostly built of wood with stone lining the bottom third of the wall, and dark wooden slates covering the double roof. It had been built in the corner of a small clearing in the forest, and when she’d found it she could tell it hadn’t been inhabited in years. She’d had to dust and pick up debris for a full day (not to mention setting up the perimeter as soon as she’d arrived) before settling in that first night, and it had taken her half of the next day just to set the place up for an indefinite stay, including fixing the limited plumbing so they’d have running water and using random earthenware pots she’d found lying around outside to make a natural fridge. The cabin had no real kitchen to speak of, just a sink and a small pantry, so she’d had to build a cooking spit in the clearing outside. When the task ended up taking up two hours she couldn’t help but curse herself for always leaving the fire-building to her teammates when she’d had to camp out on missions.

   After the first few days the living arrangements had been much easier to deal with, and she’d begun to find a sort of pleasure in the simplicity of her new lifestyle. She’d never necessarily considered herself an outdoorsy-type, especially since she’d mostly found herself camping for missions and not for fun over the years. There hadn’t really been room to enjoy it until now.

   She slid open the door to the cabin and removed her boots at the door before entering. She moved the meats around in the earthen fridge next to the sink before placing the basket inside and then washing her hands, figuring now was as good a time as any to get started on the day’s work. There was at least a week or two of it left before she’d be finished, she estimated, and the sooner she was done the better – not that she had any idea what to do then.

   There were only two rooms in the cabin, the bathroom and the main room, with only a wall dividing the bedroom area from living area in the main room. She went the small distance from the kitchen through the walkway, pulling a chair from the wall up next to the large bed.

   Haru stared down at Itachi’s comatose form lying prone beneath the covers. He hadn’t awoken once since she’d found him in the ruins of his and Sasuke’s battle – not that she’d expected him to. When she found him he had been on the brink of death, the primary catalyst being the degenerative disease in his organs coupled with chakra depletion and extreme physical exhaustion – not to mention blood loss. Had she found him even a few minutes after she did, he would’ve been gone.

   She’d gotten lucky in many ways, she knew, even beyond reaching him with such good timing. She’d found this cabin, for one, having happened to run in the right direction after leaving a hot spring with Itachi still over her shoulder. Her journals full of the medical research she’d done on his condition, and even some notes she’d taken on his Sharingan over the years, sat on an end table next to the bed thanks to her foresight before leaving on her last mission. Her research combined with observations she’d been able to make their first few days in the cabin had yielded her a life-saving understanding of his disease, because she’d just happened to tilt her head a certain way while using her Keigan and noticed the pattern in cell distribution that she’d been looking for.

   But that had been three weeks ago. The only luck she’d really had since then had been finding more and more vegetables growing in the forest around the cabin, and, she supposed, in that she’d made so much progress on healing Itachi. She’d never dealt with a condition that required so much continuous attention to heal – usually because of her Keigan she healed patients in record time with minimal to no use of chakra, but a disease like this… she couldn’t imagine how long it would take a normal medic to make any progress on it at all.

   The problem was the fact that the disease was the result of a birth defect, meaning that she had to be able to heal the deteriorated cells (which three weeks ago had meant almost every cell in all of his organs) accurately enough that it would be completely eradicated. Not only did this process take a while just because of the nature of the disease, but without the diseased cells already eradicated, when she would go back to healing him after a night of rest, the disease would have spread again. It never spread faster than she healed him, but it undid enough of her progress on a daily basis that she was having to waste time healing parts of him that she’d already finished with the night before.

   Haru activated her Keigan and leaned over him, pulling the bedcovers back just to make things simpler. Indeed, the outer bronchi of his lungs had been taken back over by the disease – which had been the last place she’d healed last night before she’d needed rest. She sighed, but examined the rest of him with a sense of accomplishment. She’d isolated the disease to the bronchi in his lungs by now, and she could imagine she’d be able to completely eradicate it by tomorrow morning – if not sooner. After that she’d be able to finish the work she’d done on his eyes, which she’d only paused progress in to prioritize the worse deterioration elsewhere. He’d been almost completely blind after his fight with Sasuke (she assumed from overuse of the Mangekyou,) but with the progress she’d made in the last three weeks, he should have been at the point he’d been at before their fight.

   She sat down and set to work, hoping perhaps she’d gotten faster at healing him after three weeks of practice.

* * *

 

The first thing that registered in Itachi’s mind was a wooden ceiling. The second thing that registered was a heartbeat.

   His own heartbeat.

   But that couldn’t be right. It was some type of illusion of the afterlife, some perk or trick of paradise or hell. He could hear his own voice in his head, the last words he’d spoken before he succumbed to the darkness, _“I’m sorry, Sasuke. There will be no next time.”_ He felt altogether too conscious and not awake enough.

   Itachi blinked. Still the wooden ceiling. That couldn’t be right, either. He could barely see Sasuke’s face in hindsight, a blurry, black and red shape in the darkness, tunnel vision, no details, not even enough to make out his expression that he’d assumed would be fear or anger. But his vision now… He couldn’t make out the whorls in the wood but he could make out the paneling and the gradients of color.

   He shifted stiffly. There was no pain but there was an ache along his spine, he wasn’t sure from what. Surely this was hell, then. This was the prologue to an eternity of emptiness or pain or darkness. This was a fever dream. He sat up, slowly, feeling out his stiff limbs and ligaments and muscles, trying to remember how to coordinate it all.

   Then he was sitting up. More panels of wood. He turned his head to the left: a window with a bright light shining through, too bright to make out shapes, more wood paneling, and an end table covered in papers and journals and books and an unlit candle. To his right: wood paneling, a rigid wooden chair with a pillow lying on the seat, a sleeping bag on a cot next to the wall. The room emptied into another, no door, and across the way he could make out a sink, a cabinet, a large earthenware pot, a threadbare rug.

   He shifted again but something held him to the bed – there was a large, fluffy, black comforter laying across his legs, bunched up around his hips from when he’d sat up, beneath it a thin green sheet and on top of it a dark brown fur blanket. He moved from beneath the covers, his head swimming in all the colors and textures. It had been a long time since his eyesight had been so detailed, and with his last memory shrouded in the dark of blindness, this afterlife, this fever dream, was starting to give him a headache.

   Itachi stood carefully from the bed, using the wooden chair for support. Once he was sure his balance and coordination could be trusted, he walked into the next room.

   There was an old couch on the opposite side of the wall that divided the place, and to his left was a small fireplace that hadn’t seemed to be in use in a few days. Directly ahead of him was a small table and another rigid chair. Beyond that was a sliding door made of glass, green curtains pushed over the right of it so that the natural light from outside poured in. He had to squint his eyes against the brightness, and when even that wasn’t sufficient he held a hand up in front of his face to block out the bulk of it. He had to make his eyes adjust, he knew. For some reason everything was too bright in the afterlife.

   After several minutes of alternating his gaze from the blinding outside to various darker spots within the small building, he was able to make out more details of the outside: greens and browns, then trees and grass, what had to be a small clearing in a forest, then a dark spot out in the clearing that he couldn’t make sense of from this distance. Everything farther than ten feet away was still too blurry, and he found himself rather disappointed that some of his ailments had followed him to wherever he was.

   He took a deep breath – something nudging him in the back of his mind, but he didn’t care to figure out why breathing would cause that feeling – and slid open the glass door, still slightly squinting as his vision filled with more light, more color.

   It was warm outside – a perfectly mild climate with the slightest of breezes and the sun raining warmth upon his skin. Something smelled amazing in the clearing, like something his mother had once made when he was a child. But still, there, a hint of some type of flower on the breeze, something clean and sweet mingling with the damp smell of earth. He looked out, finding the dark spot in the distance, but now that he was on the threshold it wasn’t all that far. It was moving, and there was smoke rising from behind it.

   It was… a person? A woman. He took a few tentative steps forward, refusing to watch his steps so he could watch the scene in front of him. His bare feet met the grass in near silence and he continued, relishing in the cool, comforting feel of it, as his vision grew a little more detailed.

   Her hair was a rich, deep brown, like the fur blanket back inside the cabin, and it cascaded in beautiful, wavy layers down the woman’s back to the curve of her waist. She was kneeling with one knee in the grass in front of a small cooking spit, stirring a pan of what looked to be an assortment of spring vegetables in a dark sauce. Even from ten feet away he could make out the strength in her slender hands, and it stirred memories in the far recesses of his mind – by instinct he looked down at her clothes: a black, sleeveless turtleneck, black pants, black boots that covered her calves.

   He recognized the uniform but couldn’t bring himself to care. He looked back to her hair instead when the breeze picked up and wrapped it around the curve of her waist. She tossed her head to the opposite side, he assumed to get her hair out of her eyes, and it blanketed her back once more.

   Fever dream, maybe. But not hell. This felt more like paradise now – and yet the thought made him sad. If this was the better side of the afterlife, and this woman was here, was she dead as well? As he stared at her in silence, his heart skipped a beat and he put a hand to his chest – her hair was wavy, larger waves near the top of her head and smaller ones near the ends, as if they’d been in a braid for a long time, and the sight was suddenly too familiar, too much like—

   “…Chiharu?”

   The woman froze, her entire body tensing all of a sudden before relaxing only slightly, as she took the pan off the fire and placed it on the surrounding rocks. She stood in a steady pivot. Her green eyes met his and he knew he’d been right. But that meant—

   “Itachi,” she whispered, eyes wide. He noted her strong hands again, now shaking subtly at her sides. Her voice was hesitant and surprised and yet so, _so_ relieved. “How… how are you feeling?”

   He took a step forward, taking in every one of her movements, each breath that filled out her breast and each blink of her wide eyes. Her right hand twitched forward as he approached her, as if she’d thought better of reaching for him – so he reached out instead. His fingers closed gently around a strand of her brown hair as he came to stand a foot from her, moving it behind her ear from where it’d been brushing against her cheek. Her eyes were glistening and he frowned.

   “Itachi?” she muttered hesitantly.

   This couldn’t be Haru, he reasoned in his head. Not only because she couldn’t be dead, but because she was too timid. If she’d joined him in the afterlife she would have embraced him by now, or taken his hand to lead him to greener pastures. This was a vision.

   But then none of it seemed right. Her warm cheek against his palm, the softness of her hair tangled in his fingers – there was too much detail, too much feeling, too much of an ache in his arm for this to be a paradise or dream. But it couldn’t be… he had to ask…

   “Is this heaven?” he asked her, his voice hoarse, frowning a little deeper.

   She opened her mouth, then closed it briefly as his question registered. “N-… no,” she answered, frowning slightly in return. “You’re not…”

   “…I’m not dead?”

   She shook her head, and her eyes filled with concern.

   His fingers twitched in her hair and he stared at his own hand for a moment, letting it sink in.

   He wasn’t dead. He was still alive. And then it all made sense at once, the cabin, the bed, the clearing in the middle of the woods – her presence right in front of him, wondering how he was feeling, concerned about his questions and too nervous to reach for him. Breathing. Vision. He met her gaze again, making sense of the glistening in her eyes. Worry. Guilt.

   Haru had saved him. Somehow. She had been in the vicinity of his and Sasuke’s battle – she must have been tracking him as Kakashi’s team had been. She must have figured out the timing of everything, known what was coming, and then somehow found him after he’d run out of chakra to continue the clone and the genjutsu he’d used against her. But then—

   “Where is Sasuke?” he asked.

   He could tell she was surprised at the calmness in his tone. “He’s—“ she started, breathed in, then started again, “he’s fine. He’s alive.”

   He nodded but frowned again, thinking.

   “He was unconscious, too, when I found you both,” she said quietly. “I made sure he was okay before I left – but he doesn’t know you’re alive.”

   “Ah,” said Itachi, the frown slowly dissipating. He carded his fingers through her hair almost absently. There were so many questions in his head that he wasn’t sure how to prioritize them – there wasn’t a lot that he could just deduce at this point, and part of him feared to consider the possibilities.

   Her hand met his, her thumb nestled in his palm, and she pulled it from her hair gently to hover in between their bodies. “I know you have a lot of questions,” she said, her face almost expressionless. “But we should go inside so I can do a small check up and make sure it’s safe for you to be walking around. And… you’ve been on and off an IV for a while… so I want to make sure you can eat okay.” She smiled a little, though it didn’t reach her eyes. “I made your mother’s stir fry, coincidentally enough…”

   He looked down at their hands, brushing his thumb across her palm, before meeting her gaze again after a moment and nodding.

   She took a deep breath, and retrieved the pan from the cooking spit before leading him back inside the cabin.

* * *

 


	25. Sins, Like Skeletons

* * *

They had finished the meal slowly in relative silence, and Haru took the dishes to the sink to wash, her face pensive.

   Itachi knew she wanted to examine him, but he could tell that the questions she knew he had were burning inside her head as much as they were in his. The relief he had seen in her face out in the clearing hadn’t resurfaced since they’d come inside, and it was so uncharacteristic of her that he knew their discussion needed to be prioritized. He could safely admit to himself now, in their seclusion, that he deeply cared for her well-being. Eliminating her negative aura was more important than any check-up.

   She returned to the table when she was finished but didn’t sit down in the chair she’d retrieved from the bedroom. He gave her a look but she refused to read it. “It would be easier to do the check up with you lying down,” she said. “I just have to make sure of something…”

   “It can wait,” he said. His voice was still slightly hoarse, he assumed from lack of use for however long he had been unconscious. He continued when she frowned at him, “It would be best for us to discuss… what I’ve missed. I can tell it’s distracting you and I’d rather like to get it out of the way, myself.”

   She swallowed, and reclaimed her seat. There was the guilt again in her eyes, but he couldn’t imagine what would possibly warrant it. “Alright,” she conceded. “…What do you want to know first?”

   He decided to work backwards, in an attempt to put her at ease. “Where are we?”

   “Near the southern border,” she answered, meeting his eyes. “In the peninsula. About a hundred kilometers from Tea, I think. I found this cabin by chance, and it seemed to have been abandoned for years.”

   With the particular climate this early in spring, he’d assumed as much. There was nowhere else in the Land of Fire quite so humid and temperate. “How long have we been here?” he asked then, hoping she would tell him what he’d really intended to find out.

   The question registered in her eyes. “It took me four days after I found you to travel this far,” she said. “We’ve been here for three weeks, on top of that.”

   He’d been unconscious for three and a half weeks since his fight with Sasuke, then. He frowned. The thought left a hollow sort of feeling inside – too much could happen in the space of a week, let alone three. He had to work hard to sift through all the ensuing questions in his head for the most logical ones to follow up with. “Have you been waiting for me to awaken?” he asked, then reconsidered and figured he should clarify. “I can’t imagine it’s safe to stay in one place for so long…” He frowned again at himself. His thoughts felt jumbled.

   She understood him nonetheless. “I’ve been healing you,” she explained. “I don’t know how much you know about your disease, but from what I could figure out, it’s the result of some sort of birth defect that made you more susceptible to it, manifesting probably when you were a child. Because of how rare and complex it is, even with the Keigan it’s taken me this long to undo the damage and eradicate it.”

   He regarded her carefully, trying not to get his hopes up over her word choice. “I would assume you’ve made a great deal of progress with it,” he said carefully, “given how easy it is to breathe now.”

   She smiled softly. “As of today, actually,” she said slowly, “you’re cured of it.”

   The hollow feeling left him, replaced with a solemn sort of triumph. Cured. He hadn’t breathed so effortlessly in years – indeed, he hadn’t even considered a future beyond this point since he’d entered his teenage years. He allowed himself to turn the possibilities over in his hands for once, allowed himself to believe there was a future at all. When it proved too disorienting, he sighed deeply, and exhaled his acceptance. There was a dark edge to this feeling of triumph that made him dizzy.

   The smile on her face faded naturally as she watched him, and he was sure she could see all of emotions playing out on his face. “There’s still a lot of work to be done on your eyes, however,” she continued. “You were almost blind when I found you, so I restored as much of it as I could manage in between the work on the disease, but of course I had to prioritize the disease first. I don’t think it’s a good idea for us to leave until I’ve finished with your vision.”

   He nodded slowly. “How long do you estimate we should remain here?”

   Her mouth twisted slightly. “Probably a week,” she said hesitantly. “But I’m not entirely sure. There’s a certain level of damage in your eyes I haven’t touched yet that may prove more difficult than what I’ve healed already. That’s part of the reason I wanted to examine you now.”

   “Part of the reason?” he repeated.

   She nodded. “The main reason is that I have to be sure the disease doesn’t re-manifest,” she explained. “The way that it’s structured… it would take back over areas that I’d healed if I went too long between healing sessions. My theory is that when there are no more diseased cells in your body to spread it to other cells, the disease will cease to manifest anymore, but I’d rather not assume that the cells are one hundred percent healed until I can prove it with repeated observation. And that’s not to say I lied about curing you – I’m positive I succeeded. It’s just the nature of it that requires checking up on.”

   “I see,” he said, then sighed softly again. He couldn’t delay the most pressing question any longer – he could only hope that her aversion to the discussion wasn’t a result of any factually based worry, but rather the difficulty of the conversation itself. With the way she tended to mask her emotions, there was no way to tell before asking, and, if he were being honest with himself, that fact made him truly nervous. “…You said that Sasuke was alive. ‘He’s fine,’ you said.”

   She nodded, and her eyes mirrored his nervousness for a split second before the mask fell back over her eyes.

   “Where is he now?” he asked.

   The look she gave him felt like a cautionary warning. “He’s…” she started, resting her arms on the table. “He’s with Madara.”

   Itachi’s eyes narrowed.

   “When I found you both,” she went on, “Zetsu was there, near your bodies. The way he was talking, it seems he had been watching and possibly recording the entire fight for Madara. They came back right after I’d left with you and took your bodies…”

   His brow furrowed in confusion, and before she could continue he asked, “How do you know this? And you said ‘bodies,’ but that you left with me?”

   She scratched the back of her head, likely a habit she’d picked up from Kakashi. “It’s hard to explain without telling you in the right order of events,” she replied. “But I should have started by explaining the bodies, I’m sorry – when I found you both, I figured Zetsu and his accomplice would return fairly quickly, so I only had time to make sure Sasuke would be alright, and then make a body switch. I’m not sure if you’ve seen it before, but Keigan users can perform this complex kind of genjutsu – it can replicate fairly perfectly any human body you perform it on, but it only lasts for a week at most before it dispels naturally. The good thing about it is that no amount of wounds or jostling will dispel the jutsu, and because it carries a pretty neutral amount of residual chakra, there’s not really a way to detect the jutsu without knowing to look for it. So all Madara has is a very convincing trick that’ll last them a week.”

   “It’s been three times that long,” said Itachi. “Surely they would have noticed my body’s absence by now.”

   “I’ve been wary of that fact, yes,” she said, the stress of paranoia showing in her features at the thought. “I have a feeling that they must have buried or entombed your body relatively quickly given that they likely have no way of preserving it, so it’s possible Madara has no idea it’s gone. But I put up a genjutsu and various other traps around this area, not to mention how remote it is to begin with – at the very least if they’re looking for you now, that will buy us enough time to escape.

   “But as for Sasuke,” she continued with a frown, “they took him when they took your body and went to some sort of safe house near Grass. He was unconscious for a few days during which Madara rounded up the team he’d been travelling with and brought them to the safe house as well. When Sasuke woke up, Madara revealed himself to him, but Madara was able to counter whatever protection it was that you’d programmed into Sasuke’s Sharingan. And once Madara had convinced him of who he was… he told him everything.”

   He frowned again. Madara – or Tobi, as was his alias within Akatsuki – didn’t know the whole truth, as Itachi had made sure of, and wouldn’t have any reason to tell Sasuke anything of what he did know. _Unless…_ he thought. But it would depend—“What do you mean by ‘everything’?”

   “Everything,” she repeated. “About the Senju, the Third War, the Nine-Tails attacks. And he told him about the coup. Our missions. How you’ve been serving the village and protecting Sasuke even after becoming missing-nin. _Everything_ , Itachi.”

   He crossed his arms and lowered his gaze, letting the information sink in. Almost everything about his plan had failed – in theory, at least. Sasuke still believed he was dead, regardless of whether they knew where his body was, but now he knew the truth. Or most of it. The fact that Madara had even known Haru was involved told him he knew more than Itachi had thought he did, but he had a feeling that Madara had likely omitted or changed around some of the truth to fit his purposes.

   Madara had to be using Sasuke for something – besides the fact that they were now, supposedly, the last living members of the Uchiha clan, he never would have bothered with his brother unless it served him personally. And Itachi knew what he wanted for the most part: revenge against the Senju clan, revenge against the Uchiha, revenge against Konoha, and ultimate power for himself, to somehow rule over the shinobi world. The question now was how Sasuke factored in to any of this.

   He turned his gaze back to Haru. She’d been watching him warily, he knew, but she seemed satisfied enough that he wasn’t furious. “How did you find all of this out?” he asked curiously.

   “By accident, actually,” she said. “I ran across Sasuke and his team during a supply trip to a city further north. They didn’t detect me in the crowd, but I overheard them talking for a while and connected the dots. They were headed east, I assume towards Wave or maybe Water, for some sort of political reconnaissance. But that’s all I could gather. They’re planning something – something dangerous… I don’t know what, though.”

   Political reconnaissance could mean anything. It seemed he’d have to do some reconnaissance of his own eventually to find out anything more about his brother’s and/or Madara’s plans. “…Have you heard anything about Konoha?” he asked after a moment.

   She shook her head. “Not really,” she said, then lowered her eyes to the table. “I overheard a few things on my supply trips but just bits and pieces that don’t really add up – some sort of argument amongst the Elders and preparations against some mysterious something. With the low profile I’ve been trying to keep, I couldn’t figure out a way to ask anyone anything without drawing attention to myself. And I can’t contact anyone without causing the same problem.”

   He uncrossed him arms and leaned forward on the table. “Where does the village think you are right now?”

   She kept her eyes down, but he could see the sadness spark in her eyes. “Nowhere,” she muttered. “I had a letter forwarded discreetly to the Hokage the night I found you. I told her I couldn’t return to the village with the team. And… I told her to declare me missing-nin.”

   “…You abandoned Konoha to save me?”

   She looked up at him then, and he noticed the tears welling in her eyes. Something she saw in his expression made her jaw clench. “You have every reason to be angry with me for saving you,” she said quietly. “But as far as Konoha is concerned – you’re no better than me when it comes to sacrifices. You’re the only agent that Konoha has with the connections that you do – you were the village’s only pipeline to Akatsuki, the only contact we had with the shinobi underworld – you have always been invaluable to the village. Regardless of my own ridiculous selfishness, how could I just let you die? How could I possibly kill the most loyal shinobi Konoha has ever had?”

   He watched as her jaw clenched tighter and she looked away from him, tears still shining in her eyes that she was too stubborn to let fall. She’d thought he would be angry at her. But there were too many thoughts swimming around in his head, too many emotions to pick just one to emote, so he’d kept his face blank, which surely had only realized that expectation of hers. She felt guilty, unsure of the consequences of her actions, but he didn’t know how to reassure her, or even what to reassure her about. “…I would have made the same decision,” he said, settling for truth over comfort and hoping they’d be the same thing in the end.

   She looked at him again. She seemed to acknowledge his acceptance, but her expression didn’t change much. If anything, she only seemed to become more upset. “…You wanted to die,” she whispered.

   _Ah._ He should have known better, especially given the last encounter they’d had in their hideout, when she’d first understood the extent of his plan. She’d been furious that he’d planned to die at Sasuke’s hand, and he imagined she would have yelled at him far more than she did had he not doubled over in a coughing fit. But this was why he’d never told her his plan, to save her the pain of having to accept his decision. “I did,” he muttered.

   “…Because you’d rather give Sasuke the satisfaction of killing you than succumb to disease,” she said. “But you must have known, Itachi. You must have known I could have saved you – that I was the only person left who could – and I _did_.”

   “I didn’t know,” he replied softly. “And neither did you. Perhaps I shouldn’t have assumed it would be impossible for the Keigan simply because of what regular medics had told me. But I wasn’t interested in trying. …That, I cannot deny.”

   She narrowed her eyes at him, and a tear spilled over onto her cheek. After a moment her eyes softened with pain. “…You felt guilty,” she whispered in understanding. “For going through with the mission.”

   He kept his face blank and leaned back in his chair fluidly. “I did not feel that I deserved the life that was left to me,” he admitted in response.

   “…And what does that say of me?” she muttered, her voice cracking. Another tear fell. “I’m just as guilty as you.”

   “I came to terms with my guilt shortly after I last summoned you,” he said. “Because of you.”

   She stared at him.

   “Because of what you just said,” he clarified. “Knowing that my guilt was as great as yours, but the sacrifices we make… for what’s important to us, and what serves the greater good of all…” He shook his head at himself, and at his difficulty to articulate what he meant. “Of course there is much that I regret, but the past is the one thing we cannot change. Regardless, had I had more time after reaching that conclusion, perhaps I would have let you help me… but Sasuke’s future was more important than my survival.”

   She wiped the tears from her eyes and exhaled. He could tell the conversation had worn her out, and he felt the same way, but at the very least relief returned to her expression with her acceptance. “I think we’re even, now,” she sighed after a moment. “As far as sacrifices go.”

   He offered the hint of a smirk. “Yes, I believe we are,” he agreed. They were both missing-nin, now, after all – both traitorous shinobi who had exiled themselves for Konoha’s benefit. And with the way their lives usually went, he could only assume their duties to the village were far from over.

   “…I’d like to do that check-up before it gets too late,” she said once the small smile had faded from her features.

   He nodded his consent, then watched as she stood from her chair and held her hand out to him. He didn’t need the support, but he took her hand in his own and stood, her eyes level with his mouth. She led him back to the bed he’d spent three weeks in, only letting go of him to retrieve a chair from the other room.

   They were silent while she examined his vision, but the tension he’d noted in her had all but dissipated.

* * *

 


	26. Safe Distance

* * *

By the time Haru returned from hunting, she was shivering in the cool morning air. A cold front must have moved into the area, but she’d thought the exercise from hunting would have warmed her up enough to not need any more layers than she usually wore; and yet, for some reason, even after an hour of exercise she was freezing. She landed rather ungracefully at the door to the cabin, tying up her small bag of game with the intention of warming herself up before she would skin and prepare them.

   She placed the bag inside the fridge once she was inside, then replaced the damp cloth over the top of it to let the meat stay cooled. The small fireplace opposite the kitchen would have to be cleaned out before she could even think about using it, so after she covered her shoulders with a travelling shawl she rummaged from her backpack in the corner (the warmest thing she’d brought with her,) she made the fireplace her priority.

   Nearly half an hour had passed before the fireplace was finally lit, and she sat in front of the hearth, pulling the shawl around her, until she stopped shivering. It was shortly after she’d begun to feel warm again that she heard the near-silent rustling on the other side of the wall, and then the quiet padding of bare feet against the hardwood floor.

   “Are you sick?” she heard Itachi say from behind her, his voice quiet and slightly husky from sleep, but betraying his amusement at the sight of her bundled up in the middle of spring.

   She turned to look back at him and suppressed the urge to stick her tongue out at him. Of course three weeks in a coma wouldn’t have dampened his sense of humor, she should have known better – although she still found herself having to get re-accustomed to his humor after years of being without it. “You’re not cold?” she asked.

   He gave a noncommittal noise and then approached to help her to her feet. When she was standing, her hand in his, he said more seriously, “It’s too warm in here for your hands to be this clammy.”

   She frowned. “Maybe it’s because I didn’t stretch before I went out,” she muttered, removing her hand from his to flex her fingers out. “Bad circulation, or something.”

   His brow furrowed slightly but he walked to the sliding door, pulling the curtain back to peer outside. Haru walked back to the fridge by the sink, rummaging inside and gathering some fruit for their breakfast. “I should have bought some granola or rice or something when I was in the city last,” she said, more to herself than to her companion. “This no-grain diet can’t be good for energy production.”

   “…I’d like to start training soon,” Itachi said.

   She looked over at him, pulling the cover back over the fridge. He’d only been awake for a day, but she could imagine the knowledge that he’d been completely inactive for weeks must have made him anxious. “That’s probably a good idea,” she replied. “You’ll have to start pretty slow, though. As sick as you were, and as long as you were out, your muscles underwent a lot of misuse and atrophy.”

   He continued to stare out at the clearing, a slight frown around his mouth.

   “You could start today, if you wanted,” she continued. “But it’d be best to start with just some stretches, maybe some basic kata.”

   “Hm.” He came away from the door, and took the plum she offered him when he approached her, watching as she ate her own. “You mentioned a city nearby.”

   “Well, relatively nearby,” she said after swallowing. “There’s a small city north of here, about halfway to Wave, right before the peninsula starts. It’s fairly shinobi-friendly, so I’ve been a couple times to pick up supplies. I’ll probably have to make another trip tomorrow, actually.”

   He took a bite of plum thoughtfully. “That is where you found Sasuke?”

   She nodded. “At an inn – I caught his voice just as I was walking by. They blended into the crowd pretty well,” she said. “But for that matter, so did I. There were a ton of shinobi in the marketplace that particular trip.”

   “It doesn’t sound safe for you to go alone,” he mused.

   “I haven’t had any trouble so far,” she chuckled. “Cities like that, everyone tends to keep to themselves – everyone’s trying to keep just as low a profile as the next person.” She finished the plum and threw the pit into a bin near the sink. “Besides, if you’re suggesting coming with me, I don’t think that’s a good idea. Even with a disguise it’s too dangerous for you to be around that many people – not to mention you’re not fit to travel so soon after coming out of a coma. You’d be better off holding down the fort while I’m gone.”

   He smirked and took another bite of plum. “…I imagine you must tire of my company after weeks of such close proximity,” he said, then pinned her with a look, a familiar glint in his eyes.

   For all the amusement she felt at his playful jab, she couldn’t help the blush on her cheeks that his look also incited. “You can’t be serious, playing that card on me,” she laughed, but turned to finish the leftover dishes in the sink in an pitiful attempt to hide the heat in her face. It was easy to forget how handsome his expressions were after years of familiarity – it wasn’t often that she had time or peace of mind enough to pay any attention to looks and attraction.

   She missed the triumphant smirk on his face at successfully inciting such a reaction, but she didn’t miss the low chuckle he gave at their mutual teasing. “It can’t be helped,” he said nonchalantly, “when you make so many excuses for escaping my company.”

   She snorted. “As if that’s all I’ve been trying to do this whole time,” she replied, “is try to escape you. I’m pretty sure I could have left you for dead at any point and have been done with it.”

   When he didn’t reply immediately, she winced at her choice in retort. It had come so naturally that she hadn’t thought anything of it, but now the thought – leaving him for dead, being done with him – sparked a sad sort of cognitive dissonance. He’d come too close to death to really joke about it. She dried her hands on a towel and turned back to him, blushing now for a different reason than before.

   Itachi, however, was merely finishing his plum with his arms half-crossed over his chest, watching her change in emotions with the same amusement in his eyes, though a bit softer than before. “Yet, you didn’t,” he said after swallowing the last bite. “So I suppose I was wrong.”

   She set the towel down behind her. “Wrong about…?” she asked carefully. She hadn’t expected him to be so playful still after such an ill-placed jab.

   He stepped impossibly close to her, backing her into the counter around the sink, and her blush imperceptibly deepened. She heard the _thump_ of the plum pit drop into the bin behind her and to the right, his arm extending past her side. He looked down at her calmly, the glint of amusement no longer in his eyes but the hint of a smirk still gracing his features. “About you wanting to be away from me,” he answered, and stayed hovering in her space.

   She looked up at him, overly conscious of her heated face, slightly nervous from his behavior. “…You’re in an awfully good mood for someone who almost died not too long ago,” she muttered.

   “I suspect you have something to do with that,” he replied softly.

   “Me?” she asked, slightly confused.

   He gave a short chuckle, less at her expense, it seemed, and more at his own thoughts. “…You still think I’m angry with you for saving my life,” he muttered. When she only looked askance in reply, he guided her face back to his with a gentle hand on her chin. “The best-laid plans of mice and men go oft awry, I believe the saying goes. And I rather think your plan the better one now. I owe you my thanks more than disappointment or regret, Haru.”

   As genuinely happy as the statement made her, she wasn’t used to such intimate attention, even from Itachi; and even with his hand on her chin she couldn’t help but attempt looking away from him out of mild embarrassment. “…I can’t deny the base selfishness of my actions, though,” she muttered, her gaze somewhere around his jawline. “Regardless of the benefits of your life for the village…”

   “Saving the life of someone dear to you is no selfish act, despite what I may have wanted or planned for at one point,” he said. He moved his fingers along her jaw until his hand rested against her reddened cheek, and the action brought her eyes to his again. “It is very much the opposite.”

   She imagined Sasuke’s face in her mind’s eye, realizing then why there was so much conviction behind his calm words. The parallelism of her actions to his was disorienting, though she suspected it wasn’t the only reason for her sudden lack of breath. “…I’m glad you’re alive,” she whispered then, the only thing she could think of to say.

   He didn’t reply to that, but really he didn’t need to – it didn’t take much for her to understand him, to understand that of course he was glad for it as well. Instead, he leaned closer, closing his eyes as he gently rested his forehead against hers. He breathed deeply, and she closed her eyes as well, listening to the healthy sound of it and breathing in time with him. Her hands had come to rest along his ribs at some point, neither of them were sure when, but the delicate embrace had him feeling more peaceful than he had even when he’d breathed what he thought to be his last breath weeks ago.

   “Itachi…” she mumbled.

   He opened his eyes to look at her, finding her green irises crowding his vision.

   There was an urge within her that she wasn’t used to, an urge to close the gap, to move as close to him as space would allow, but the urge was inevitably contested by responsibility and, she was surprised to realize, fear. Fear of the unknown – regardless of whether it was an action they’d both taken before and regardless of the strength of their relationship. Fear of the timing of it all, fear that this urge only consumed her in moments of such high emotion – was this normal?

   The look in his eyes told her he was well aware of these feelings, perhaps even that he mirrored them. She closed her eyes again and took a deep breath, then turned her head towards the hand on her face and moved forward to hold him instead. He hesitated for a second, just as ill-accustomed to the affection as she was, before he laid his arms over her shoulder blades, one hand on her braided hair.

   “We should get to work,” she spoke into his shirt after a moment. She could feel the cool metal of his necklace against her temple.

   “Hn.” His arms relaxed against her but neither moved.

   She sighed, pushing the dissonance in her head to the side and focusing instead on her mental to-do list. “I want to do at least two healing sessions on your eyes today,” she said, finally moving out of his embrace and accidently backing into the counter again. “And I didn’t catch much this morning, so even after I prep what meat we have, I’ll have to go hunting again later. I also have to check the perimeter since I didn’t get to it yesterday, what with you waking up and everything.”

   He nodded once. “I suppose I’ll stare at a wall until you have need of me.”

   She snorted at him and lightly pushed him out of the way so she could head for the bedroom. “You’re welcome to do all the gross animal work,” she said over her shoulder, then beckoned for him to follow her. “I know you’re mostly vegetarian but I couldn’t find any other sources of protein in the area. No nuts or lentils or anything.”

   She turned back to gesture at him to lie on the bed as he nodded his consent to her suggestion. “Alright,” he said as he laid down. “Is there anything else I can help with?”

   “Hmm.” She moved the chair up to the bed and sat down. “Well, I can help you start in on your training when I get back from the forest, but in the meantime… I don’t know. You could dust? Or cut up some vegetables for lunch and dinner? And I suppose we need a grocery list for when I go into town.”

   He smirked and closed his eyes as she activated her kekkei genkai and set to work on his eyes. “…We certainly are not our parents,” he muttered.

   She raised a brow at him. “In more ways than just gender roles, I hope,” she joked.

   The healing session went as smoothly as expected, despite her frustration at her slow progress. It couldn’t be helped, though – healing ocular wounds and diseases was a delicate process to begin with, given the nature of the organ; adding genetics and bloodline abilities to the mix only served to make things more complicated no matter how adept a healer she was. After an hour of intense focus, they broke to attend to the rest of her to-do list: Haru geared up (more warmly this time) and headed out into the forest to check that her jutsus around the perimeter were holding up as well as to hunt for more animals to use for their meals, and Itachi set about tending to the meat and vegetables she’d already procured.

   She made a mental note while she was out to buy them both warmer clothes. It was strange that they were experiencing this much of a cold front so far south, and in a peninsula nonetheless – one of the perks of the area she’d chosen was supposed to be the warmer climate, and yet her fingers felt numb as she leapt through the trees, and the exercise barely raised her inner body heat. Halfway through hunting, she caved and focused some of her chakra into her core, using it to warm herself up. She hadn’t wanted to waste her reserves but she just couldn’t stand feeling cold.

   When she returned, she handed over her haul to Itachi to prep while she made lunch for them on the cooking spit out in the clearing, which thankfully allowed her to keep her hands around the heat of the fire. After they’d eaten and cleaned up, she ran him through an hour of stretches and basic katas, and then an hour of target practice on the tree line, watching his deadly accuracy with an almost proud smile. His vision was better than it had been in a year, and it showed in his clear focus and the relaxed line of his shoulders. She could remember clearly the stress in his figure when he’d ambushed her and her team months ago, the slight squint of his eyes and the faint line on his brow while he’d fought her that she’d known then was clear evidence of his fading vision, and even thinking him an enemy at the time the sight had made her sad. Yet, in less than a week now, she estimated, his vision should be perfect.

   They passed the rest of the afternoon inside the cabin, much to Haru’s pleasure. She kept the fire going with the dwindling pile of firewood next to the hearth, which she knew she’d have to replace soon if the weather kept up. Mostly they talked – about interesting missions they’d been on in each other’s absence, books they’d read, stories about people they knew in Konoha or that he’d met in his travels – everything they’d never really had time for since he defected almost ten years ago. She found herself avoiding the subject of her closer friends, Kakashi especially, though she’d been able to tell Itachi about the deaths of Asuma and Anko that she was, in a way, still mourning. She just couldn’t bring herself to consider what her friends must think of her and her new criminal status – she couldn’t imagine what Kakashi possibly thought of her now, and couldn’t even imagine the rumors that must have spread about her. From a distance, she knew her actions probably didn’t make a lot of sense, even to shinobi that knew her personally.

   For the most part, Itachi didn’t push – he never did. She knew he could tell what she was avoiding and what it meant when her side of the conversation would grow less animated, but as with most emotional subjects between them, she knew that meant it didn’t really need to be said. At least not yet. They had time – actually _had time_ – to worry about certain things later. And while they certainly didn’t run out of conversation, his quiet nature usually had her doing most of the talking, which could be understandably tiring considering neither of them had talked so much to anyone in weeks.

   By the time they were eating dinner that evening, they had eased into a comfortable silence. She found herself glancing up at him more and more often, eventually holding his gaze when he would inevitably catch her watching him, and she found herself wondering why his gaze had made her so nervous earlier anyways. It wasn’t until he smirked to himself at some thought he’d had that she remembered, and she could feel the ghost of his warmth against her face. She finished her meal quickly after that and started on the dishes, mumbling about doing another healing session once he’d finished eating.

   The second healing session of the day passed in more comfortable silence – a little less so than earlier, but comfortable nonetheless. She was grateful that working with the Keigan prevented her from staring at his outward features. His handsome smile may have affected the woman, but it couldn’t touch the healer.

   “You should be completely healed in less than a week,” she informed him as she was finishing up. She began to think of the warm sleeping bag behind her, excited, almost, to fall asleep for the night. “Then I suppose we should figure out what we’re going to do.”

   He made a noncommittal noise as she leaned away from him and allowed him to sit up in the bed. Neither of them were sure what would come next after he was fully healed. Thoughts of Sasuke and Konoha loomed over them both but there was no kind of plan to be made when they currently had so little information.

   She deactivated the Keigan and quickly moved the chair back to the table in the living room, stretching her arms as she returned to unroll her sleeping bag over the cot opposite the bed. He went to change in the bathroom, which usually meant removing his shirt and the wrappings from around his waist and thighs, and by the time he returned she was poking the fire in the next room with a frustrated groan.

   “The fire’s on its last leg, and we’re out of firewood,” she said, then glanced over at him leaning against the dividing wall. She frowned at his lack of shirt. “You’re not cold?”

   He shook his head.

   Her mouth twisted, but she sighed and moved past him to change into her own sleeping attire, an old black camisole and knee-length leggings, cursing herself for not packing warmer pajamas but knowing better than to sleep in her dirty uniform. She hurried into the warmer confines of her sleeping bag while Itachi blew out the candles around the room and slipped pensively under the covers of the bed.

   It didn’t take long for her to discover that while her sleeping bag was warmer than the chill night air creeping into the cabin, it still wasn’t warm enough to sleep in. She frowned at herself in the moonlight pouring in through the curtains of the window on the opposite side of the room. She couldn’t remember being this fickle about these sorts of things – in fact she could clearly remember missions in which she’d forced herself to fall asleep under seemingly impossible conditions, in the danger of enemy territory and even once during a typhoon. Soon enough she was shivering again, and she wrapped her arms around her abdomen, curling into the uncomfortable cot.

   “Your shivering is keeping me awake,” Itachi muttered from the bed.

   Under any other circumstances she would have rolled her eyes at him. “I don’t guess my sleeping bag is suited for cold fronts,” she said between clenched teeth.

   “…There’s more than enough room in this bed for two people.”

   She felt her cheeks warm up despite her shivering, and turned her face more towards the cot. “I… I’m not sure that’s appropriate.”

   She heard him snort softly at her. “I don’t see how propriety is a reasonable concern in this situation,” he said.

   She didn’t have an answer to that, and instead debated quietly in her head over what to do. He was right that there was really no reason for her to turn down a perfectly warm bed if she was going to be shivering all night otherwise, and given everything the two of them had been through together… it didn’t really make sense for her to be averse to sharing a bed with him. They’d shared a bed together when they were children, especially while she was staying with him and Mikoto during the war – but of course a five- and a six-year-old sharing a bed had a much different connotation than two adults doing the same.

   Not that the differing connotation was too far off from the truth. Was it?

   She frowned at herself for how much she’d caught herself blushing in one day, and she found herself getting up out of her sleeping bag more out of frustration than conscious choice, and once she was standing it was too late to change her mind. She padded over to the other side of the bed, making herself climb under the layers of covers to escape the cold before she could think twice about it.

   The bed was certainly large enough for both of them – in fact, there was still a good amount of space between her and Itachi, even though she could feel his body heat permeating the blankets. She pushed all invasive thoughts aside and tried instead to focus on how warm and comfortable the bed was.

   She felt her bedmate shift slightly under the covers and she opened her eyes, realizing that he had been facing her. His eyes were already closed, attempting to fall asleep, but there were the invasive thoughts again, the memories of that morning and the urge she’d felt to close the distance between them. She shut her eyes tightly, forcing the image of his face from her mind and failing spectacularly, wondering when she’d devolved into such immaturity.

   She fell asleep a short while later, dreaming unsurprisingly of when he’d kissed her in Akatsuki’s hideout before she was scheduled to die, of when she’d kissed him in their own hideout when she’d feared for his life, of similar moments in her mind that hadn’t happened, moments she made up in her slumber.

   Sometime during the middle of the night, they’d moved unconsciously closer, until his arms were wrapped around her with her head against his chest, hands folded against his abdomen.

   They remained that way until morning, when there was a rustling outside the window.

* * *

 


End file.
